Have Respect

By: Margo Kirtikar Ph.D.
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:15
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Respect leads to compassion and compassion leads to love and love is life. Life is love. I am not talking about physical love. I am talking about loving and respecting life, people, animals, nature and the Unknown. Begin with the nearest and dearest to you. That is no one else but yourself. Have respect for yourself. Treat yourself with respect all the time no matter where you are and what you happen to be doing. When you do that, you will find it easy to have genuine respect for other human beings, animals, nature and the world around you. It will be easy for you to feel compassion for others everywhere, and it will be even easier for your heart to fill with love. Love for humanity, love for the world, love for God.

Having respect for yourself, for others, for life itself, will change the quality of your life. We live today in a world that has lost all respect, respect for human life, for the animal world and for nature itself, even respect for God. God of love and peace that is. We individually can make a difference in the world by practicing respect with ourselves and with each other slowly spreading it around.

You know how badly you feel when you are treated with disrespect by anyone, for whatever reason, and you also know how much better it feels to be treated with respect and dignity. Here’s a short story about how life reflects back to us whatever we give it.

A father and his son were walking in the mountains. Suddenly, the son trips, falls and hurts himself. ‘Aaaahhhh!’ he cries our in pain. To his surprise, he hears the voice repeating, somewhere in the mountain. ‘Aaaahhhh!’ Curious, he yells out: ‘Who are you?’ He receives the answer, ‘Who are you?’ So he screams to the mountain. ‘I admire you!’ And the voice answers promptly, ‘I admire you!’ Angered at the response, the boy screams, ‘Coward’ and he receives the answer ‘Coward’. The boy looks at his father and asks: ‘What is this? What’s going on?’

The father smiles and says: ‘My son, pay attention.’ The man screams: ‘You are a champion.’ The voice answers back ‘You are a champion!’ The boy is surprised, but does not understand. The father explains to the boy. ‘People call this ECHO, my son. This is what LIFE is. It gives you back everything you say or do. Our life is simply a reflection of our actions. If you want more respect, treat others with respect. If you want more love in the world, create more love in your heart and spread it around you. If you want more competence in your team at work, improve your own competence. If you want people to be good to you, first you be good to them. This relationship applies to everything, in all aspects of life. Life will give you back everything you have given it.’

And that is exactly how it is. Think of life as if it were a bank, invest in it what you want to withdraw, you get from the bank what you have put into it, nothing more nothing less. Observe life around you and you will see it for yourself. Have and act with respect towards your parents, your partner and your children, if you want to have respect and love from them. Some people are erroneously in the belief that at home they can be themselves, in other words let themselves go. So they let their guards down and hang up their respectful manners and polite attitude that they have for the outside world, along with their coat on the hanger by the door, as they walk into their homes. With family, they think, they can relax meaning they do not need to be respectful or considerate. Wrong. In fact very wrong! If we do not practice respect at home, we cannot possibly know how to be respectful outside of our homes. It would only be an act for the outside world and not genuine respect. Develop a habit of respect and watch how much joy it will bring into your life.

We are creatures of habit and we develop automatically both good and bad habits as we live, so you might as well be in control and conscious of what habits you develop. In particular have respect for all those who differ in opinion from you. Respect their opinion and point of view. They are as entitled as you are to their own thoughts and beliefs. Go ahead and practice this faithfully for four weeks or longer if necessary until it becomes your second nature.

Article source: Expert Articles