The Myth of Respect.
It’s funny how people get so caught up in the search for something that doesn’t exist. I’ve seen people argue, families fractured and relationships ruined because one side or the other felt like they were being disrespected.
These arguments over a myth can destroy the harmony of a home, or shatter constructive conversations between the old and the young.
All because someone felt they weren’t being respected.
So if I were to ask you to define respect, what would you say? A manner of speaking, a way of behaving, the proper showing of deference to another? I would ask you why this is necessary? I’ve done this before with people, and it always comes down to someone feeling like they are owed something.
Sure, they might detour around the subject for a while with the argument that it ‘preserves civilization’ or that it ‘teaches the young to be controlled until they are ready’, but it’s never really about that.
It’s all about the lack that a person feels inside.
When you think about the really spiritual people who have walked the earth, they weren’t above another. They didn’t need to be fawned over, or ‘treated with respect’ by having people stand when they enter a room.
The truly humble people, those who have done the work to balance their soul, are just grateful to be a part of whatever. They didn’t need to ‘preserve the order of things’, or to ‘teach another how to behave’.
They weren’t looking out for themselves, they were looking for an opportunity to serve.
In my life, the people who have ‘demanded respect’ have been those who had deviated from the path of love and service, and were instead extrapolating a sense of significance from the structure and order they seek to impose upon the world.
They fear the dissolution of the organization that they mistakenly believe gives them a sense of ‘being in the right place’, when the ‘proper place’ is nowhere without and everywhere inside.
If it’s not ‘about’ you, you can never be disrespected.
If you seek to serve, and to uplift and edify others out of the absolute knowledge that it is right, taking no sense of personal value from the interaction, then you show up with a different energy.
When the force of your love and compassion lead your interactions with another, you’ll find a very different energy in the interaction, and you’ll have no need or desire for ‘respect’, because you desire only to help another heal, another enjoy, another edify and another find peace.
Once you realize that ‘respect’ is a myth, you’ll show up with a different energy, and you’ll touch the lives that no one else could.
And in doing so, you may find that others treat you with ‘respect’… and you’ll realize why it was never necessary at all.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings