By Jannah Bolds
Editor-In-Chief, The Bold Opinion

— The Golden Rule — 
“Do unto others, as you’d want others to do unto you.”

Since when did kindness become a lost art? I’m beginning to see acts of kindness praised, glorified, digitally documented, and even overly appreciated. “Overly appreciated” in the sense where people are surprised or confused on why someone is doing something nice for them. Have we become so out of touch or removed from such instinctual human habits that the simplest gestures become the highlights of our days? Not sure about you, but I think it’s pretty normal to just be kind, do favors, or show appreciation to the people you know and even those you don’t. I apologize, in advanced, for the rant, but I’m sure someone’s soul needed to hear this. We’ve got to do better.

Just to share a quick story, I had to show in court the other day for an unnecessary traffic citation. My hearing time was only an hour and a half before my scheduled time to work that day, so naturally, I rushed to handle business as quickly as possible! To the dismay of my rushing ass, each courthouse visitor is subjected to a thorough security search upon entering the lobby. I don’t go to court that often, so it honestly slipped my mind that it was a BLOODCLOT government building.

So there I am, rolling my eyes with capitulation and stripping myself of metal objects, electronics, and other sharp things just to get myself to the assigned courtroom. Up the elevator I go and am soon met by one of the court officers instructing the group to power off their cellphones and pagers. His age definitely showed itself that day because, who the hell has pagers anymore? Anywho, the perfectly mindful, law abiding citizen in me stopped to reach down into my purse for my…

(Gasp)
Eyes wide, mouth slightly a jar 

I know this sounds bad but, literally the first thing that came to mind was that I was downtown Atlanta and one of these toothless, pickpocketing-ass bums got me for my phone! Mother F*$@&%!
I hope I successfully communicated how instantly stressed I became in that moment. The millennial in me thought,” I could have avoided this human interaction if they’d just let me pay my ticket online!” 

So now I’m in complete kernel panic mode where commands from the court staff sound like Japanese and me trying to decide if I should plead nolo or guilty; a complete wreck. With memory racing faster than Tyson Gay, the court pushed me through since my citation was one of the smallest. Longest twelve minutes of my life.
I took the stairs to the lobby, where I’d previously stripped, and asked the guards manning the metal-detector-conveyor-belt-thing if they’d found a phone. “I was down here like fifteen minutes ago. Have you seen an iPhone with Prince’s face on it?!”

Boom, he pulls my phone out of their metal lockbox and hands it to me with a smirk and nod. My blood pressure decreased almost immediately, until I heard someone behind me say, “I’m the one who found it. I should get some kind of reward.” My comfort-smile slowly turned into an aggressively confused “Excuse me?!” I turned around and a woman dressed like a pickpocketing-ass bum I imagined earlier, repeated herself. I paused and gave her a politely stern, “No Ma’am, but thank you for being a decent human.  Good deeds and kindness are currencies of the soul and will take you father in life.”

Having felt that I’d left her with a good message, I exited the building thinking about nothing but the golden rule. Money feels better than a good deed or treating someone with kindness? Have we become so out of touch?

I’m not the best story teller, as I’ve been told, but this small city interaction was just a fraction of how the world interacts daily. Imagine if everyone lived by that golden rule. What a world that’d be.

Image source: Instructables.com