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“Do unto others what you want others to do to you.” ~ X

I was watching a commentary on a chapter of the Bible I’ve read before, and something stood out to me in a way I had never seen before.

We all remember the story in Genesis 27, where Jacob, with the help of his mother, plays a fast one on his father and brother, right? He deceives Isaac and takes the blessing meant for Esau. Afterwards, he has to flee to his mother’s family for safety because Esau wants to kill him.

Now, here’s the interesting part: one of the first major things that happens to Jacob after leaving home is that he gets deceived too. He meets Laban, falls in love with Rachel, and agrees to work for him for seven years so he can marry her. Seven whole years. Only to wake up after the wedding and realise he had been given Leah instead.

Laban had cheated him.

And honestly, it’s giving, “What goes around comes around.”

Jacob had deceived his brother, and now he was on the receiving end of deception himself. The irony is almost too perfect. He had taken advantage of someone through deception, and now he knew what it felt like to be the one who had been deceived.

Of course, the Bible doesn’t present this as a simple mathematical formula where every wrong thing you do automatically comes back to you in the exact same way. But there is something striking about Jacob’s story. The man who once used deception to get what he wanted eventually found himself in a situation where someone else used deception against him.

And maybe that is one of the reasons we are told to treat people the way we want to be treated.

Dearest reader, sometimes we dish out things we could never stomach receiving ourselves. We speak to people in ways we would be hurt to be spoken to, we disregard people’s feelings because, in that moment, we are too focused on what we want, we forget that the person on the other side of our actions is a person too.

So before we act, we should pause and ask ourselves, If the tables were turned, would I be okay with this? If I were the one receiving this treatment, how would I feel?

Because you may not always receive the exact thing you give, and life does not always work like a neat system of cause and effect. But the way we treat people matters. Sometimes it comes back to us directly, sometimes it doesn't.

And if we would hate to be on the receiving end of something, then that should be enough reason to think twice before handing it to someone else.

@favvy_Okwans🖤