#silverrule

For years, I’ve played sports, instruments, done homework... everything. Whenever I messed up, I gritted my teeth and reminded myself of what I did wrong so I would improve. Some days I grew so frustrated I cried. Others, I did get better. People have always told me to shake it off, and I thought I was shaking it off, but in reality I was still pretty harsh.

I just started taking Oboe (it’s a band instrument) lessons again, and I have a new teacher now. I’ve been careful to not get mad at myself around him, but he KNOWS. He knows exactly how I feel after making a mistake. For the last few lessons, he’s been saying,”You know that stuff you say to yourself after you mess up? Would you ever say that to a student?”

Every time he says that, I can just picture my little sister, a friend, a kid I babysit, or some random kid sitting next to me with an oboe in their hand. Every time my oboe teacher reminds me of that, I try to make myself yell at this little kid and say the same things I say to myself.

“You’ll always be the worst.”

“You can’t even figure out that trill.”

“At this rate, do you even like oboe anymore?”

I can’t make myself say it to that poor, innocent face. They’re young. They don’t know any better. They’re still learning. Besides they would only need to run through it a couple of times and be more confident.

If I can’t say those things to them, then why should I even THINK about saying them to myself? It’s not constructive criticism. It’s punishment. All I really need to do is go back out there, slow things down, and figure out what went wrong. Once I know what went wrong I won’t yell at myself or beat myself up, even when I forget to do it. I’ll just do it the next time.

Forget the golden rule. The whole,”Treat others how you want to be treated,” is overused and has lost all meaning at this point. I’ve never read the Bible, I’m atheist, but I’ve heard that this line is in the Bible. That means that the phrase is over two thousand years old. Do you know how much has changed in 2,000 years?