I don’t think I could be happy without self respect, not for long anyway. Happiness can be achieved in relation to something or some condition or you can just decide to accept something. Self respect assumes a common definition of morals and implies you approve of your adherence to them. Sometimes it’s a very external feature of our environments that challenges or qualifies our happiness with something. Self respect, although seemingly internal, shares values we know to be true as well as perhaps we are lacking in participation of as defining attributes.
You can be at peace with decisions you make that you think will bring about happiness but that does not guarantee you have made a respectable decision. I could be easier to rectify a decision that makes you happy than it could be to right one that caused a lack of self respect. I guess it has a lot to do with how you define self respect. I choose not to lie, steal or hurt people. It is a matter of integrity and dignity. Even if someone does something to me, I find it no excuse to react with their level of disregard or iniquity. I patterned my behavior from behaviors of others towards me that I the past I despised or which participation in invite even more deceit and malice. I try not to let my actions become slave to my desires, Even if it means forfeiting happiness.
It is not as easy as being happy with something to claim happiness. Often the condition is very much a measure of its opposite. In other words, I may not be happy but I am not as unhappy as I could be or was. Sometimes the choices we make do not leave us with the most optimal and desired outcome but leave us with the feeling we have not stooped to tactics elow the level of morality and thus, we are satiated.
Somehow somewhere along the way in America, we got the notion that we could have everything, be everything and always be content. Especially now as times and the economy get rougher we are forced to make choices between things. Being happy in this regard can be relative to what is acceptable as a norm or minimal status. We can choose to be happy or ok with something, but once defined and accepted, it is hard to dance around our deliberations of self respect. Some definitions have taken a long time to develop. Some levels of self respect require actions that have taken a long time to embrace (or abstain from). Sometimes we are just plain oblivious to the moral and social ramifications.
For a long time people regarded me as having no self respect. To the contrary, I just did not care what they thought about me. I truly thought they had a general disregard that should by its nature and severity, preclude me from caring about their opinions one way or another. This often led me to displaying shocking behavior that didn’t necessarily leave me feeling like I had show the greatest respect to myself but nonetheless made me feel in control of the negative attention and judgments and therefore, “Happy”
Jason,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a valid point in that it is sometimes easy to make a decision and feel good about it although it isn't necessarily the best for the most. And it is easy to behave in ways that show we are the ones in control which our little minds equate with self-respect when in fact it is just pride that leads to those decisions.