I Don't Believe in the Golden Rule

He was almost sitting on top of me.

I had the flu or some kind of something that wouldn’t let me get off the couch and my partner was almost sitting on top of me. So sweet, really. Rubbing my shoulders, his fingers through my curls, looking into my eyes for signs of what I may need next. Very … present.

Me, I badly wanted him to do the dishes, which I could see piling up out of the corner of my eye. Throw away my Kleenex and old tea bags, straighten out the pile of books on the coffee table. Create what I needed: an orderly environment where I could heal.

Then sit next to me. No talking, maybe one hand on my arm. Stay with me as I dozed in and out of sleep. Very… present.

It was the early months of our relationship and eventually, over the years, we synched and he would know just what to do if I got sick. I too would know just what to do if he felt bad: sit almost on top of him, run my fingers through his hair, bore my eyes into him.
Definitely not do the dishes.

It took time. It took asking, and it took speaking up. It took being ok with giving something we didn’t want nor understood. It took generosity and it took vulnerability, and it took humility. Also, it took love.

You see, none of us come with an owner’s manual and without one, the best heart-guided thing we often do is: to treat others as one would want to be treated by them.

Ugh.

As time passes, I have tried over and over to remember this. To pay attention to what someone might want or need, independently of what I would want or need. Then to give them that. Even - or especially - when it seems to make no sense to me.

Writing this article, and because words are fun, I tried to think up for a name for this, for this adjusted Golden Rule. for “my” rule. “What could be better than gold?”, I asked myself. Well… platinum! Platinum is worth more than gold. I will call it The Platinum Rule! Then for good measure, I did a quick Google search and read: “As opposed to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," as the golden rule states, the platinum rule asks you to "do unto others, wherever possible, as they would want to be done to them." Ha! And there I thought I was so innovative. Platinum Rule indeed.

Yesterday came with a great opportunity for me to practice this.

I had committed to taking my neighbor’s pup to the vet to get her spayed.

I fell in love with this girl in the fall of 2022 when she was just a few weeks old, living in the same barrio as we do along with her baby sister. They played and played as puppies do, she was the shiest one of the two, the lighter colored one, the smaller one too, and seemed to follow her sister wherever she went, happy to be in the background, her white coat often covered in red dirt.

Chiquita and her sweet sister, in the fall of 2022

They were both getting bigger and when I came back from a short trip to the city last summer, as I was walking up the dusty road toward my home, a neighbor asked me to follow her to the back of her house where the bigger sister was laying under a tree, sleeping peacefully. Except she wasn’t sleeping. She had died. Just like that, under a tree. I still don’t know what happened. A scorpion? A snake? Poison? I don’t know but it shook me up and my heart hurt to see the little sister day after day sitting on the edge of the road, without her playmate.

As I walked by, I would stop and pet her and she would roll onto her back so I could rub her belly. Before I knew that her family had named her Güera (White Girl) I started calling her Chiquita.

Chiquita grew and settled into her own sweet personality. She goes on daily walks with Lila and me and most days, and whether I am coming home by quad or by car, she races me to my house and meets me there as I arrive. Some belly rubs, a little food (in this exact order of importance for her) and she goes back home, across the field. A good life.

Last October, as I was coming back from another trip to the city, Lila and I took a walk, and whereas Chiquita always bounces to join us as we pass her house, this time she showed up with two male dogs, one on each side of her. She seemed bothered by them and they wouldn’t let me get close enough to pet her. They walked with us across the rivers, down the muddy roads, one always flanking her whether she stopped to pee or sniff something.

I did not like it one bit.

I recognized this energy, this possessiveness, this invasion. I knew I was taking it more personally than was necessary, these are dogs after all. Still. I did not like it.

And I was pretty sure she was about to get pregnant if she wasn’t already.

Sure enough, sixty-three days later six puppies arrived, and as much as I love puppies, I resented these guys. She seemed overwhelmed by them and quickly started to get really skinny, feeding all of them on an already thin frame.

I vowed to keep her stocked in calories and I vowed to do whatever I could so this would be her last litter. I told her so.

Now, the pups are almost four months old, they are beautiful, three have new homes and I am hoping the other three will get to the free spay/neuter clinic this weekend. Then find forever homes.

A couple of weeks ago I mustered the courage to talk with Chiquita’s mom and ask her if it would be okay for me to take her to the local vet and get her spayed (there is a wonderful organization in the village that makes sure that all the sterilizations are free). I don’t know why I was so nervous about it, but I was. Would she be offended? Would she send me away and if so, what would I do? I had promised.

But no, just as my friends had told me she would, the lady was fine with it. Which made me wish I had asked six months ago.

So yesterday, off we went, into my car at 6:45 am and over the bumpy roads towards Dr Julio’s office. Chiquita had never been on a leash before and her first car ride had her shaking. I kept one hand on her, sang to her, and asked her to please trust me, that we were going to have a couple of “adventure days,” and then all would be back to normal.

I stayed with her until she got drowsy from the calming, pre-operation shot and then went home to prepare her a soft nest of blankets to come back to. She had never spent a night at my house - or any indoor house - always preferring to go back to her place to sleep and I was really hoping she would hang out long enough to heal a bit and get her first day of meds.

Thus the soft blankets.

At noon I picked her up and my ego got a blow. I thought for sure she would be so happy to see me, ready to leave the clinic. But no, she took one look at me and turned her head the other way, wouldn’t even look at me. “She hates me,” I thought. “I betrayed her and she will never come to visit us again.”

Then I remembered that even if that was the case, it didn’t matter. No new puppies roaming around mattered. No “accidental litters” mattered.

Arriving at home, I carried her into the living room where a friend was waiting and I plopped her onto the couch. There she stayed between us for a few hours. All three of us napped, petting her, talking to her, and telling her that it was going to be ok. I started to think the night would be easy after all, she would either be on the couch or on the fluffy blanket nest I had prepared for her.

Just the way I would want it for myself.

Except, not.

As soon as she felt strong enough to get up, Chiquita got off the couch and made her way into the bushes outside of my studio. Under the palms. On the dirt. Where I certainly could not pet her or keep an eye on her.

Where SHE was comfortable.

Because you see, The Platinum Rule.

Whew.

At dusk I managed to crawl back there and give her her two nighttime pills and then as night fell I had to remind myself that she was doing just what she needed to do, just what worked for her. The blankets remained untouched and we all went to sleep the way we wanted to: Lila, Tiji, and I under the mosquito net, and Chiquita a few feet away, in the dirt. I prayed that the antibiotics would take care of any potential dirt coodies.

It took some mental gymnastics for me to stay aligned with what SHE wanted, what was comfortable and familiar to her. To stay away from what I thought would be best because this was what I would want, or what my girls would want. To not insist that she slept in the soft crate I had borrowed for her. To stay away from The Golden Rule and instead slip into The Platinum Rule.

This takes work.

In human relationships, it takes curiosity, which can often be the opposite of judgment.

It takes work too, to stick by someone who is choosing a different road than the one we would take. To stand by even when that path makes no sense to us.

To not say: “Well, I made you a bed and blankets and you are choosing to sleep in the dirt, so if your stitches get infected, I don’t want to hear about it.”

It takes work to get up and do the dishes when if it were us, we would want to be held.

By morning, she had made her way into the kitchen where she ate a whole bowl of food as soon as I got up.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before she would want to walk across the field to her home and her three pups.

When she did, I sent her a bunch of love and told her I would be bothering her twice a day to give her pills for a short while. She was slow moving but her tail was wagging.

We had done it.

Today, I invite us to choose the harder work of connecting authentically with the beings in our lives to discover how they would want to be treated.

And then with love, away from fear, to do just that.

We can do this.

This life….