DANVILLE — The law of reciprocity isn’t on the legal books, but maybe it should be.

Better-known as “The Golden Rule,” motivational speaker and self-confessed former “dweeb” Brooks Gibbs said treating others the way you’d like to be treated can make all the difference.

“Love is greater than hate,” Gibbs told Danville District 118 middle-school students, who gathered at Danville High School’s auditorium Friday to hear his motivational message. He delivered a second presentation to DHS students in the afternoon.

“It’s not a school problem,” he said, “it’s a human nature problem. It’s a timeless principle and it’s usually the adults who have a hard time with it. Loving your enemies is just perceived as unrealistic.”

Gibbs is a nationally renowned speaker brou-ght to Danville by the Danville Public Schools Foundation and the Provena United Samaritans Medical Center Foundation.

Following a miserable junior-high experience that included almost daily humiliations at the hands of classmates, Gibbs was able to turn his life around and eventually earn a nationally syndicated radio show.

“People loved to make fun of me,” he told students. “One negative comment can do more damage than 100 compliments. I just couldn’t seem to figure out how to ‘do’ school.”

At one point Gibbs became so depressed he started “cutting,” the act of injuring oneself to create an endorphin “high” that temporarily masks internal pain.

“Kids were brutal and it killed me on the inside,” he said. “I would allow their words to destroy me. I couldn’t take any more abuse. I would feel good by hurting myself; it became addictive. I was such an easy kid to pick on.”

A drunk and deadbeat father left him fending for himself until his mother finally challenged him after a particularly awful day at school to rise above his circumstances.

“She empowered me,” he said. “She said you have to be responsible to not fight fire with fire — it’s actually you that’s making yourself mad.”

Gibbs said he learned to “diffuse the bully” by not reacting.

To illustrate the point, he brought two students on stage and instructed them to berate him.

In the first go-around, he responded to the insults with his own zingers, turning a comment about his shoes into a counter-jab about the child’s pants.

On the second try he took criticisms with ease and more constructively, in one instance answering a student’s claim Gibbs had bad breath with a request for gum.

“We have free speech in America and anyone has the right to hold an opinion of me and to tell me,” he said. “If we’re going to set these kids up in the real world, they’re going to have to know how to deal with a boss who’s a bully.”

Gibbs said his message isn’t so much “anti-bully” as it is about self-empowerment and the struggle to shake culture’s “victim mentality.”

“Being a friend and loving other people takes you far,” he said. “When you get mad it’s like drinking poison hoping your enemy dies. Love is one of the most misunderstood words in the universe — it’s not a feeling, it’s a choice.”

Gibbs eventually rea-ched out to his father and forgave him, which led his father to become sober and reestablish a relationship with his once-lost son.

Bob Richard, executive director of Danville Public Schools Foundation, said the presentation is one way to enrich students outside of the classroom.

“Brooks puts a unique and entertaining perspective on bullying,” he said. “His message is very timely. He tries to give them some life skills and it’s a great way to get the school year started.”

Gibbs said educators started taking bullying more seriously following the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, where the student-perpetrators claimed they were taking revenge on school bullies.

Last year District 118 school administrators revised the bullying section in its student handbook to include “cyber-bullying,” wherein students bully others by e-mail or cell-phone texting.

On the Net

• For information on Brooks Gibbs, author of several books, go to http://www.brooksgibbs.com.
• For information on the Danville Public School Foundation, go to http://www.danville.k12.il.us/DPSF/index.html.
• For information on the Provena United Samaritans Medical Center Foundation go to http://www.provena.org/usmc/home_usmcfoundation.cfm%20?id660&frtrue