Respect. Find out what it means to me

So today's word is respect.  A word I tend not to use much, but maybe I should.  The trouble is I find people who bang on about the importance of  'respect' tend to be stuffy, stand on ceremony types I have little time for, and,  oddly, they have little real respect for anyone.  How much are the problems of our society due to a lack of respect, and how has that respect been lost?

Right, I could go several ways with this one, and I have no intention of trying a third rate sociological analysis from my slightly right of centre, middle-aged female stance.  The reasonableness with which I view things would irritate all of us. No, I don't think we should have the death penalty, yes, something does need to be done to make the punishment fit the crime, but if people are truly to be forgiven and allowed to start again, then society needs to build that sort of system into our prison service.  That, of course, costs money, which the country doesn't have because it's keeping all its Ministry of Defence civillian staff and making what seems to be large swathes of our Armed Forces redundant.  Which means that come next summer when the disrespectful youth and others want a new telly and trainers and decide to go on the rampage to get it, destroying homes and businesses on the way, no-one will be there to stop them.  Has the world gone mad?

Well, yes.  We all know that it has, and let's try and make the best of the insanity.

My lovely old dictionary I won at school,  'Ex inferiore sextae Classis Parte Quia in arte recitandi egregie, In Memoriam Algernon Page', aka the Page Memorial Reading Prize - I did The Shrimp and The Anemone by L.P. Hartley - has the definition of respect as this:
"respect -n relation, regard, reference, heed (to), particular, point, deferential regard, or attention (pl) expressions of esteem v.t To esteem, to treat with consideration."

There is a bit more but that should be enough to be going on with.

My first thought is self-respect.  Oh, that difficult area, on a continuum between doormat and pompous arse.  At what point is pride in yourself, so much a part of self respect, arrogance?  I suppose it depends on if you respect others.  If your self respect is merely to put yourself on a pedestal, above others, the fact that you treat yourself with consideration and ignore others diminishes any value in your self respect.  If on the other hand you see worth and value in all around yourself and never look inwards, could you not really be seeing others as they are?  I find this really difficult, and I know I've explored it elsewhere, but a lot of this problem comes back to my childhood, or rather my mother's childhood.  She had become a lapsed Catholic by time I was a few years old, something that niggled at her all her life, and she found her faith again when her cancer appeared.  It's a bit simplistic to link those two factors, I suppose her illness was the catalyst.  Certainly she found great peace in her faith, and she was tremendously brave with all that she had to face.  When her cancer was first diagnosed she knew it was an aggressive form of breast cancer, but she had seven years in remission the first time, then after the second bout a further five years of remission, then, of course, it made it to her bones and there was no more remission.

But as a child I was brought up with old Catholic values of the evils of pride and getting above yourself, but no real understanding of the Catholic doctrine.  So I'm in no position to criticise the Catholic faith, in fact I have great respect for members of the church I came into contact with over the last few years, even if I'm not entirely on-message with all the Pope has to say, but I grew up thinking that to respect yourself was somehow to put yourself above others.  What about those others?  Who should you respect?  This is where I think my memory clouds, and it is difficult to be truthful about the past.  That might always be the case, but I am particularly aware that I can't really identify who you should have respected.  We called my parents friends 'Mr' and 'Mrs' never spurious 'Aunty' or 'Uncle' labels, but both courses of actions are acts of respect.  These people were not my equals, and the titles noted that.  Men stood up when women came in the room, I stood up if grandparents came in, or guests arrived.  Thinking about the glorious 'Downton Abbey', all the ways with which respect was woven into the fabric of that society, everybody had a place and knew it.  You stayed in line because if you didn't you would be thrown out and starve - be it daughter or servant.  The story with the daughter running off with the chaffeur is charming to us now, partly because it is Sunday Evening Television, and of course two such beautiful people will have a happy ever after, but also because we sit there with a glass of red thinking 'why not?'   What is wrong with two people finding happiness outside the system?  What are the downsides of not showing respect these days?

Perhaps by not showing respect, you are not valuing the person, and what happens then?  The Earl of Grantham demands respect from all around him, because it is his house, and his word is law.  But, of course, he can only live at Downton because his American wife gave her 'fortune' to him when she married.  He regards himself as custodian, and he is merely at the top of the tree, for good or ill.  He can only strut round in those ridiculous evening clothes every night because someone has dressed him, a servant has shown him respect.  What is so beautifully played out through the stories woven into the series is the respect he shows to the servants.  Ok, so they work incredibly hard with few freedoms, but his life has its restrictions.  It's a give and take situation, and the servants would be foolish not to jump through the hoops because by not doing so they risk destititution, but he needs them as much as they need him.  Just suppposing you don't have to depend on someone, why would you respect them?

Should we automatically respect our elders?  Are they our betters by virtue of age alone?  I would argue not, but I would like to suggest that you can go through the motions of showing respect without actually feeling it.  It happens every day to all of us I'm sure, but is that automaton existence the real reason for the loss of respect in our society.  We haven't really questioned why we respect people, just that in times gone by it was a necessary behaviour to demonstrate to ensure survival.  Respect is something you earn by showing consideration.

I'm aware I could tie myself up in knots with this one, so in an attempt to untangle I looked up 'consideration' in my trusty dictionary:

consideration - reflection, thought, regard for others

So, you think of others, you 'regard' them:

regard - to look at, to give heed to, to pay attention to, to value, pay honour to, to esteem

And there we have it.  I could go on and on spinning in tighter and tighter semantic circles, but I think you get the gist.  If you respect, you will be respected.  To respect you need to value yourself and those around you, think them of worth, think yourself of worth.  The benefit of a respectful society is that we live in peace alongside each other, in trust and regard.  We respected our elders because we needed to, not because we wanted to.  To demand respect of others also demands an inner reflection.  To respect you need to respect, not because of age, position or wealth, but the people you have been fortunate enough to come across are good, kind and generous, partly because they were born that way, and partly because they have been fortunate enough to be brought up with love, kindness and generosity and learnt the true value of such virtues.  Those elders who understand this are the ones due respect, and most do, but not all.  The damage caused to children in loveless families seems irreparable, but I am not without hope.  Not all children go to the bad because a parent beats them, tells them stealing is acceptable, or demands respect without doing the same. The triumph of the human spirit seems that good will out, or at least that's my hopeful spin on it on this cold Saturday morning at the end of January.