Respect is treating others with honor and dignity.

The more I think about respect, the more I realize it is a hard word.   I have discussed respect with several people and gained a greater understanding of how challenging it can be.

When I look back in my life, I see times that I have not offered or deserved respect.  Don’t we all have bad days?  I can remember days that were not going well, and I passed my bad day onto someone else.  The repairman did not show up on time, which made me late getting to the store, which meant I was running behind to put dinner on the table.  I took it out on the store checkout person.  In reality, I think we have all had our moments.  As I think about those experiences, I can see that respect is like a boomerang. What you give out comes right back to you. The repairman didn’t respect my time, so I took my frustration out on the store employee. If you show respect, you usually get respect back, and if you show disrespect, that is most often what you get in return.

There has been another side to my conversations.  How do we respect those who have hurt us deeply?  Should we show respect to someone who has abused us, hurt us, or cheated us?

Those are difficult questions to answer.  I grew up with an alcoholic father; he was not a fun drunk.  When I think about those times, it was hard to show him respect.

I don’t have all the answers to the questions above.  But I challenge you to take some time to think about those questions and to discuss them with family and friends.  My experience has been that even in those tough situations, when I have found a way to respect the person and not the behavior or the belief, the result has been that I have felt more peace and received more respect.

To quote Wade Boggs, “A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events, and outcomes.  It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results.”  I have found the same is true for respect.