Respect is a Right

How can I have an impact?

Valid question.

But I believe the reason it can be daunting to arrive at an answer is because we immediately default to American-style big thinking ways to incorporate a new life’s mission.

But impact can be done in small daily habits…not just big bold life changing missions.

One of the ways, maybe the chief way, is via giving, not paying, respect.

The street person asking for a handout is thus treated more with derision than respect.

But as the title suggests…respect is a right and giving it, well…

it’s just right.

I wrote a chapter in my FREE eBook, School of Hard Knocks – 10 Lesson Learned, about marriage. In that chapter I make the perhaps unexpected, but I believe totally true, premise that respect is one of the keys to a successful marriage.

Today I am dredging up an old Costa Rica Guy post on respect.

In it you’ll see references to things that were going on at the time I wrote it…like the 2008 economic crash, the supposed “invasion” of Costa Rica by Nicaragua, and the dramatic and catastrophic oil spill a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico.

But I am re-posting it here because I believe it is highly relevant to the topic of respect as a general right that all we humans share.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I am going to suggest something particularly outlandish in this post. And that is, maybe that part of the Declaration of Independence that is so often quoted, you know the “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” part, is a little off. Maybe missing from that list is another thing we humans are endowed with, or at least should be…

respect.

A group of high school kids use Internet social network sites to bully a classmate to the point where the latter take his or her life…disrespect. We drill holes in the bottom of the ocean too far down to deal with the consequences should something go awry…disrespect. One nation decides to dredge a border river and cast the resulting sludge onto an environmentally sensitive and protected area of their neighbor country…disrespect. A husband decides to cheat on his wife of eighteen years and the mother of his children and the person who has given him the better part of her life…disrespect.

It seems this whole “pursuit of happiness” thing has become nothing more than an excuse to disrespect.

The pursuit of happiness has been reduced to a supposed “right” to be wealthy, to live the “American dream,” the “good life.” So, the arguably “smartest” among us flock to Wall Street in order to figure out ways to “rig the system” and get obscenely wealthy in the process…at the expense of an entire economy and millions of jobs…disrespect.

Sure I could go on and on with examples.

Maybe what the world needs is a healthy dose of respect.

Respect these days has become something we are told we have to “earn.” Or, something we have to “pay.”

To “pay one’s respects” connotes a zero-sum game whereby I have to give up something myself in order to give you the respect you deserve. However, quite the contrary, respect is reciprocal…that is, in order to get it, you gotta give it…not pay it.

Respect is reciprocal…that is, in order to get it, you gotta give it…not pay it.

Aretha Franklin demanded it, maybe you and I should to…

Life, Liberty and Respect…now there’s a declaration worth fighting for!

image credit: Pan-African News Wire File Photos via Compfight cc