There's a lot of people that like nothing more than to make you feel small. They like to grind you down, mess you up, belittle you, drag you through the mud, torture you -- and all for the ever so slight, ever so fake feeling of superiority. Too many people, though, let them. Especially if it's someone they respect.
A friend of mine went through that today. Was made to feel all of two inches high as a giant boot came down. Hearing about it made me angry. Hearing the words "but I respected him" made me hate.
When you have people's respect you have to watch your words carefully. You have to watch how you phrase things. Respect is not easy to earn, and some ill-thought sentences can blow it for good. You don't have to censor yourself, but you have to think. If someone respects you, there's a reason for it. There is something there they see. This is a world where respect is as rare as honor and truth. Why blow that for a ten second feeling of superiority? Why jeopardize all of that with petty insults when you can cure the problem with a straight line of discussion that keeps your respect intact?
Maybe because your respect was never really worth it in the first place.
I dole out my respect based on many different factors. One of those is respect for yourself. I can't respect you if you can't respect yourself. When you belittle people to feel like a god, that's when I throw my respect away.
Honestly, I'm good at making people feel like they are shit. It's one thing I do quite well. I can cut deep and hard. I don't do it for the reasons I've outlined. It looks, however, like I might have to start.
7 comments:
Between your post and that oddball communication earlier, it sounds like there was a series of unfortunate events in a multiple locations. Such an odd place.
I personally don't believe in respect. I don't want it from people and generally don't give it to people.
A majority of people don't even know what the word really means. It's kind of like the idiots I would cross paths with in high school that would be screaming "Anarchy!" and carving the symbol into classroom desks, without having a clue about what the ideology really was/is.
Speaking of high school, can you imagine how crazy it would have been if we had attended the same high school, at the same time? I'm pretty sure one of us would have died.
Stay strong. Anarchy! *tee-hee*
Laurel, those two things don't go together.
George, I know what you mean. I can see not believing in it, too. You almost set yourself up for disappointment if you give someone respect. That said, I still respect some people. I'm stingy with it, though.
I also don't care if people respect me or not.
We both would've died. Just like those two scamps from Columbine ... but we would've had better aim.
I assumed they didn't, didn't claim so, couldn't as I know nothing about either. Just pondering a workplace of poor communication.
Our workplace is nothing but poor communication masked as directives.
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