A Thought for Today...
Just something I was thinking about, that I decided to post here.
Everyone seems to go around demanding 'respect' these days. There is much implication that one can even intimidate someone into respecting them. At the same time, everyone knows the saying that 'respect has to be earned'. Yet few seem to understand how to earn it.
One earns respect by being respectable. That's what the word means - 'able to be respected'. It does not matter how vehemently one demands that others respect them, it will never happen until one is able to be respected. If you want respect from someone, the only way to get it is when they see something about you they are able to respect.
Yet somehow these days, the same people who demand respect most loudly are the ones who are least respectable. They actually deliberately go out of their way to not be respectable. To them, the word 'respectable' has become synonymous with 'boring', 'unimaginative', 'unfashionable' and 'uninspired'. I do not know why this should be the case, since I have no idea why people think it's impossible to respect someone exciting or interesting. I do know that it results in lots of people demanding respect while at the same time making sure that it is impossible for anyone to respect them.
There are plenty of people that I respect. Many are exciting, inspired, fun-loving people. Some are fashionable and some are not, because what they look like has nothing to do with whether I can respect them or not. Most are respected by lots of other people too. By definition, that makes them respectable - they are able to be respected. Surely that proves the lie - anyone can be respectable, whether they are boring or not.
So there is no reason that we can't stop demanding that others respect us, and instead turn our attention to making sure we are respectable - without believing that to do so we must become dull and conventional.
Were you respectable today?
Everyone seems to go around demanding 'respect' these days. There is much implication that one can even intimidate someone into respecting them. At the same time, everyone knows the saying that 'respect has to be earned'. Yet few seem to understand how to earn it.
One earns respect by being respectable. That's what the word means - 'able to be respected'. It does not matter how vehemently one demands that others respect them, it will never happen until one is able to be respected. If you want respect from someone, the only way to get it is when they see something about you they are able to respect.
Yet somehow these days, the same people who demand respect most loudly are the ones who are least respectable. They actually deliberately go out of their way to not be respectable. To them, the word 'respectable' has become synonymous with 'boring', 'unimaginative', 'unfashionable' and 'uninspired'. I do not know why this should be the case, since I have no idea why people think it's impossible to respect someone exciting or interesting. I do know that it results in lots of people demanding respect while at the same time making sure that it is impossible for anyone to respect them.
There are plenty of people that I respect. Many are exciting, inspired, fun-loving people. Some are fashionable and some are not, because what they look like has nothing to do with whether I can respect them or not. Most are respected by lots of other people too. By definition, that makes them respectable - they are able to be respected. Surely that proves the lie - anyone can be respectable, whether they are boring or not.
So there is no reason that we can't stop demanding that others respect us, and instead turn our attention to making sure we are respectable - without believing that to do so we must become dull and conventional.
Were you respectable today?