Respect Yourself

When I was young, my understanding of events and people was simple: Things were good or bad. This made it easier for me to deal with the world around me. Then, when I became a young man, things seemed far more complicated, and instead of black and white I saw the grays everywhere I looked. This made life dense with meaning and motive and decision, and made life harder. Now, as a man in middle age, and a new father, I find that my view of life is reducing itself to the simple again.

I think this is because I’m trying to be a good parent and teach my daughter. I naturally break complex things down into small pieces to explain aspects of life to her. Parents always do. And far from oversimplifying life, I find this brings me back to the handful of important basics of being alive.

One that I come back to again and again is respect. Respect for yourself, respect for others, respect for the world we’re born into.

I teach my daughter to try. Spelling, piano, cartwheels. To fail feels bad, certainly, but not to have tried feels worse, because you can’t respect yourself for it. And as everyone discovers, if you don’t respect yourself, no one else is going to do it for you.

Self-respect is a kind of pride — not an arrogant pride, but a pride in your own way of trying. A belief that you will do what you can, as best you can. We’re imperfect beings, and we need to understand and accept that.

Only when my daughter gains self respect can she start to have respect for others. Then she’ll be able to see in them the strengths and weaknesses she already recognizes, and accepts, in herself. And if she can accept herself, she can both accept the weaknesses — and admire the strengths — of others. This, I think, is a bonding mechanism almost as powerful as love.

So I believe in respect. Because without respect there’s no caring; and without caring, life is barren, a harsh wasteland with no safe home. Without respect we’re all enemies, with just the occasional bridge to a friend.

I’m not perfect in this regard; far from it. But I respect others for doing their best in this changing, war-torn world. I respect people for trying, in whatever way they can, to help, to live according to some internal standard. To raise their children to hope, to try and to respect.