Are you Respectful ?-5
Glorified Disrespectfulness!
So why is it so easy, in fact much easier to be disrespectful, than it is to be respectful? Why do we blind ourselves to the other’s value? Much of it is do with judging others against the standards that we have been taught to expect from others. If our expectations are not met, if people do not do and be according to our standards/expectations/desires (what we believe they ‘should’ do) then we start to judge and criticize, which are forms of attack. And you cannot give respect to another as long as you are attacking them in any way.
This is exacerbated by the belief that others are responsible for what we feel. Whenever we believe someone has let us down we blame them for our feelings of hurt. In that moment we cease to be capable of respecting them. Little do we realize they did not make us ‘feel hurt’, we did that all on our own!
All of this is not helped by an entertainment industry, which bases much of its creativity in the form of movies, games and shows about people being disrespectful to other people. Disrespect is glamorized and glorified, absorbed daily from a very young age, and before we know it we are all colluding to shape and build a society which has, at it’s heart, the currency of disrespect. Eventually, if this trend lasts long enough, there will probably be people who don’t know how to be respectful at all. They simply won’t know what respect is. Which is why, in some parts of some communities, even today, respect has almost become extinct.
But how can we respect someone who has committed a crime against our self or society? How can we respect someone who is violent? How can we respect someone who cheats or steals? Two simple answers. First, don’t take it personally! But that’s not so easy when life and relationships are, by definition, personal! Second, look behind and prior to the behavior and see the being that is innately good! Also not so easy as we tend to learn (be conditioned) to see people in black and white terms i.e. good or bad according to our feelings.
When children make mistakes, when they act against the standards of the community they find themselves in, we do not withdraw our respect. We maintain our respect for them as we understand, we forgive, we teach and we coach them. We nurture their growth into the world. All because we recognize their innocence, perhaps their ignorance and perhaps their naiveté. Perhaps all three! So why is it so different when it comes to our relationships with ‘big people’? If they are violent, insulting or acting in disrespectful ways, are they not also in a state of ignorance and naiveté? Have they not simply lost their awareness of how to establish and maintain a harmonious connection in their relationships? Have they not forgotten their ability to respect others and become ignorant of the mindset of respectfulness? Perhaps they never really learned how to be respectful? Whether they have forgotten, or never learned, can we blame them, criticize them, attack them mentally and emotionally, and still maintain our own capacity to respect others?
Om Namah Shivay
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