Self-Respect

Respect yourself - You're the best judge of what's right.

Perhaps Right is subjective. In which case, it makes complete and total sense that what is 'right" to me may be wrong to you. But I cannot live by what YOU consider right. This is my life. I have been raised in a certain set of environmental and societal circumstances. They have shaped the way I think, how I feel, my default settings - let's say. The thing about default settings is once you know you have the power to change them its just a matter of clicking a few buttons and resetting some passwords.

What if my definition of right is actually wrong? Isn't this also the age old question in conflicting religious ideologies? If everyone is right in their own mind - that doesn't mean that outside of them they are actually correct. Is it appropriate to assume we are correct in order to encourage faith within ourselves in our own beliefs? Or, rather, is it inappropriate to impose our ideas of what is right upon others. Some even go as far as to say, I am right, they are wrong, and it is my right, nay my responsibility as an enlightened individual to share my knowledge of life or money or God with the entirety of the world - the heathens, the unenlightened, the poor - they NEED us to show them the way. Is this presumptuous? Or is it our responsibility to help everyone we can by opening their eyes? Or are we, rather, the ones whose eyes are sealed shut?

Through our determined and focused faith we have narrowed our sight. We had to in order to divert so much personal energy and attention towards the subject of our faith... but isn't it possible that in making a decision and choosing to see this path as the right one we have inadvertently closed so many other doors? If we choose to narrow our view and no longer keep our religious, spiritual, psychological options open might we close the door on what is universally "right" or are we merely being indecisive at that point?

How do we ever know if we are right? And if we cannot ever truly know - must we simply have faith? if it is right to us and we believe in it and that belief strengthens us and makes us braver and more courageous in the face of adversity - how can we deny it? How can we claim that it has no use?

Why is knowing so important to us? Why have we become so keen on empirical evidence? Why must some of us not only SEE it but taste it and touch it before we believe that it is real and not out to get us? Why are we humans so generally cynical?

Love you,

M