Our Friendship Sea (for my ddh)
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
— | Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Keep this one in your back pocket for the next time someone acts like an ass and then tells you they’ve been through a lot of stuff. Respectful and yet still firmly keeping respect for yourself. |
Respect for myself…this is new to me, for I have not really ever been aware of a “self” to respect! The self I knew was more a naught than a presence. What I was not plus who I was not added up to me equalling naught, and thus I never respected myself.
I do now…and taking responsibility for shortcomings does not make me responsible for the distortions and poor choices of others in reaction to them. I can joyfully embrace my opportunity to express my true remorse in not being the perfect person I desired to be and not being “the best (fill in the blank)” I could be…
…but then letting someone add cruelty to this? Allowing them to dehumanize me, devalue me? Diminish me?
Nah, I don’t think so…not going there anymore. Respect for myself means that I own my behavior and let everything else go, and oddly, I think this sets other people free by placing them in accountability for their own choices in how to respond to my shortcomings and places a responsibility to respect themselves by acknowledging their own failures.
Hey, if Victor Frankl can overcome what he did, choose a proactive life in spite of those grave horrors? So can I…and so can you.