How Do You Want to be Treated?

"Little Kristen and Little Lindsey, you need to treat others the way you want to be treated." How often have we said that to our children when they were in a playground or in school? We probably repeated it more than one thousand times in order to ingrain it into their heads. The result and expectation was that they would treat others well but that’s not always the case.

I am happy to report that my daughters do treat others well now that they’re young adults. Now that I think of it, they treat others how they want to be treated but are not always get reciprocated. Why is that? It’s due to the capacity of that other person. They cannot provide the same level of commitment or investment into another. What is interesting, though, is that most make the effort to treat others well but they fail to treat themselves well. If you observe their behaviors, you’ll notice that something is amiss. It is either with their appearance, their health or their emotional state. What we don’t realize is that it often stems from unforgiveness, not just towards another but towards themselves.

When we don’t forgive ourselves, we basically do not treat the person we are so intimate with well. We short change the one person we spend all of our time with. In Luke 6:27-37 Jesus talks about how we should treat our enemies. Ahem….yes it is with love. Another hard pill to swallow but if you really think about it, that saying kill them with kindness really does work. What most people miss though is a key thing Jesus still wants to bring across in our present day. Most folks gloss over it because they truly do not dig the love your enemy part. Hidden within that passage is a superb nugget. It says that the treatment of others should be based on the measurement of how you and I want to be treated.

How do you want to be treated?

You want to be treated with respect, with love, with honor, with kindness, with consideration, etc. We all do. These are normal wants and expectations. How many of us treat ourselves that way? We are often critical, discouraged and disappointed with ourselves. This is due to bad choices or bad breaks. Throw in the number of times stuff has happened to us and like robots, we have been conditioned to be discouraged or disappointed with that person we live intimately with each moment, each minute and each second.

Yes, we are talking about that that person that looks back at you when you look in the mirror and although you don’t show people your internal disgust, it does reside there quietly. There are many reasons we get disgusted with ourselves. Disgusted is a strong word isn’t it? I could use the word dislike if it will make you feel better but I think many of us are past the dislike stage. It’s easier to forgive something when it’s in the dislike stage. When we harbor unforgiveness towards ourselves, it brings the passive dislike into active disgust that lays dormant and rears its ugly head when a trigger rouses it from its slumber. People learn to live with it because the arousal is periodical and they learn to deal with it. They learn to numb it.

People numb unforgiveness towards self with food, with alcohol, with sex and keeping busy (to name a few). It is easier to numb than to face it, forgive it and move on. All these steps are hard because they require change and change is not something anyone readily embraces. So basically, we rather treat others well but treat ourselves differently. If that is the case, then here is a loaded question. How can you do for others the way you want things to be done for you if you are not treating yourself well? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical?