Respect through Love

 

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Respect through Love

Only if respect comes through love does it become meaningful, seeking respectability is a worthless substitute. We become political because politics becomes a substitute for love. When somebody loves a person, they care about him/her, they make one feel worthwhile and significant. Whatever we are, howsoever we are, we are accepted. But if people miss love they start playing tricks. The trick is to manipulate others’ respect by doing something, having something – character, morality – something that people have to give respect to. But it is never fulfilling, and one can go on and on till we need a whole crowd….

We can become a president or a prime minister of a country where millions of people pay us attention. They have to because we are powerful, and we can manipulate and become dangerous. But even then, the love of one person is more valuable than the whole country looking up to us.

Respect is for something we have, not for us and what we are. Love is simply for us – whether we are rich or poor, capable of certain things or not, talented or not, it is simply for us. At least to one person we are not a stranger. Somebody has given us his or her total friendship and heart; that is fulfilling enough.

Respect is like when we are hungry and we go on reading a book on cooking. Our appetite will not be satisfied, because we need real food. We can have a thousand and one books on cooking, but that is not going to help. Love is food – and respect is a book on cooking. Everybody has been conditioned, taught from the very childhood, to become respectable: to come first in the class, to win the gold medal in the university – to do something so that we become precious.

It has been taught that only by doing something we can become precious – while we simply are! Whether we do something or not is secondary, irrelevant. So, if we have become aware of it, drop it immediately. It is a dangerous poison, so don’t allow it to remain within for a single moment. Accept oneself; because whenever we want respect from others, it simply shows that we don’t respect ourselves. Otherwise, what is the need?

We hate and condemn ourselves, so we go on creating masks to hide behind, to deceive others with. At least we can try to deceive others, even if we cannot deceive ourselves. But nobody is deceived, because those people are trying the same trick themselves. The whole world is in the same mess. So, the first thing is to respect ourselves, and not to make any demands on yourself.

There is no ‘should’ to life. Life is as it ought to be; it already is. We just have to accept and enjoy ourselves, and give ourselves in love. If respect comes through love, it is beautiful. And it always comes through love because there is no other way.