Hi, I’m Sam,
Everyone deserves
respect! Your first instinct as a human interacting with another human should
be to give respect and sometimes even in the face of disrespect, still show
respect. Showing respect says more about you than the person receiving the
respect. Most times it places you at a level where even your words can't place
you. Show respect to the extent that even someone who can't stand you cannot
deny the fact that you respect everyone.
I love to see the
instant respect we give to military men in Nigeria. Sometimes that respect
comes from the fear of what they're capable of doing but in most cases, the
respect comes from the place of their selfless decision to serve others and not
get personally recognized for it. No one enters the military with the intent of
getting famous or wealthy; so I agree that going into the military is a
selfless act just like a lot of other selfless acts people do. They are mostly
rewarded in groups or post-humously; you hear the president thanking "The
Military" for their service and not calling their names one after the
other. Most of them are always on the front line fighting to make our countries
safe and give the citizens peace of mind to go about their daily lives.
You must respect who
you love but you mustn’t love who you respect; when you respect people outside
of your circle, you are not doing it because you love them but because it is a
decent thing to do. Your actions towards people begin with you and end with the
receiver; you are not the one to decide if someone is respected or not; so as
you think you are giving respect, always try to pay attention to the feedback
you are getting; the feedback can take any form, it may be verbal or it may be
a gesture. Simply pay close attention but do not focus solely on the attention
that your actions no longer stay genuine.
It is a decent thing
to respect people no matter what level they occupy in the society. The respect
given to someone who seems “lower” than you says more about you than the one
given to someone “higher”. Most times the respect given to someone higher can
be misconstrued as “Kiss Ass” or being a sycophant. But if you are someone
known to be respectful, you cannot be labeled as a Kiss-ass or sycophant. There
is this quote I heard quite often in the past, “If you cannot respect Age,
respect Grace” and this is always applied in a situation where someone higher
than you is younger than you. I think there is a rise in the application of
this with the widespread of Tech Founders and CEOs because most of them are in
their 20s and because of their early success end up hiring men and women old
enough to be their parents. If you cannot respect them because you feel they
are of the same age as your son, daughter, junior brother, or sister then you
will have to respect them because they are your boss and they sign your
paycheck.
Respect is Reciprocal;
but don’t expect it in every scenario. I don’t subscribe to the cultural thing
where older people deserve respect from younger ones without the need to
reciprocate it. As much as I don’t agree with that, people are different. There
are no two humans that are the same and that also applies to identical twins,
there is always something that differentiates one from the other and that is
why you cannot expect people to act the same. This is why I think we should
respect everyone even when they do not seem to reciprocate it. This is not me
saying anyone should condone disrespect but in a situation where you cannot remove
yourself, you cannot give disrespect for disrespect and expect anything good to
come out of it,
“Never be so kind, you forget to be clever, never be so clever, you forget to be kind”