by CM
When children progress through school one of the many things they are taught is the “golden rule”. To treat others the way you would want to be treated. When I was younger I would laugh at our week of respect, I thought it was a silly and unnecessary precaution because at that age I had yet to learn of the cruelty that is carried within others. It wasn’t until high school that I realized just how important this rule is.
It’s a simple concept that most of us still remember, ask almost anyone in high school what the golden rule is and I’m sure they’d be able to recite it to you almost instantaneously. However, this concept that describes the basics of human kindness, while still remembered, has lost most of its meaning.
My junior year has, so far, been uneventful. My friends are good but numbered, and I choose them carefully based off of their character. My mom would tell me during my lonely fits of despair that all I needed were three true friends, and that if I had one hundred empty friendships I would still feel alone. I’m lucky enough to now have my three friends, and I’m even luckier that I have a few more. Without these people, I’m sure the difficulties of my teenage years would’ve consumed me, but when I feel like I’m sinking they always keep me afloat. It’s difficult to be sad when you have people that you know truly care about you.
The second semester has only just ended, and in my head, I’m already picturing driving my friends to the beach with the windows rolled down and the music blaring. I just want to be able to be a teenager and to experience teenage things. It is these daydreams that push me through school instead of letting school push me over the edge, and it is the kindness of my friends that allows me to even dream of these things, for my life would be so vastly empty and dull without my friends who sometimes appear to be garish sunbeams in my dreary days.
However, for me, those magical summer nights will one day become a reality, but this school year alone has already provided two people for which these things will never be able to happen for.
One. A girl from our sister school. Two. A boy from a neighboring district.
I didn’t know either of them, I don’t know what they went through, but I do know that what they left behind was a ripple of sadness and heartbreak and that I have now become a witness to the chaos that ensues after a suicide.
I’ve seen a number of girls breakdown crying in my polytech class, unable to focus on their schoolwork because of the hurt and confusion that follows someone else’s passing. It shocks me to see how many people can care about someone so much, and yet that person can remain completely oblivious. I don’t know much about suicide, but I do know that for at least one moment in time, they must have felt completely and utterly alone. And one moment was all it took to take two lives.
I didn’t know these people personally. They resided in their small corners of their community and I in mine, but even so, their ripples were so large that it touched my corner and some of the people in it. The golden rule to me used to mean nothing, it was a silly slogan that pushed not even kindness, but merely the thought of staying silent instead of being cruel.
The golden rule has faded from people’s minds as they’ve grown, replaced by unimportant ideas like dating and cars and even beach trips, and that’s only human nature. Our belief in what takes precedence in our lives changes as we grow up, and it’s no surprise that a concept taught to us in the first grade would be pushed aside. However, I believe that it is in times like these when silence no longer becomes enough. Showing that you care enough to not say something cruel does not count as showing that you care, and in a society where your worth is determined by letter grades and what car you drive, it becomes easy to forget that you are more than just a number.
If you want someone to know that you care then show them that you care. Don’t just not say something mean, choose to speak up and say something kind.
It only takes a moment for someone to tip over the edge, but it also only takes a moment to prevent that tip.