The first time I realized someone didn't like me for me and not for some preconceived notion or some reason I could repin back on them was early in high school. I was (can still be) a sharp-tongued person. It is something I continually work on, focus on, reflect on. Why? Self-respect, I suppose. There is a saying that goes something like care not what others think of you, only what you think of yourself. This is so...utopian.
It cannot be avoided that others perceptions of us reflect not only themselves but ourselves as well. Didion speaks about identity and self-respect as parallels throughout this piece. "It takes two to make an accident".
This is so very true. While it is important to analyze and identify when another's perception of you is mislead or fueled with malintent it is also important to realize when it is you in the wrong. It becomes a weird thin tightwire across our canopies if canopies can allude to individual perception feeding into a whole.
The first time I asked someone why they didn't like me, it was hard. I can be perceived as cold, detached, an asshole, overly analytical. I never would've learned these things if I didn't have enough self-respect to ask. All of these things at moments in my life have defined me. In this moment, this early high school moment, I came to realize that my insults, meant to be in jest mostly, were often perceived as hurtful. In Dr. Ballenger's radio essay class we listened to an essay from This American Life which explored a man's identity amongst his friends. He discovered that he is the asshole. That his friends didn't like him. He chooses not to change.
This, to me, is not self-respect. This is burying one's head in the sand. This is pretending everyone else is wrong. Self-respect is about the ability to identify and grow as a person. To contribute on a greater scale than we did yesterday.
I haven't heard this episode to which you refer, but it seems almost like self-respect means not jumping at the opportunity to change oneself in order to be more liked. I can also see it the other way, though - self-respect might also mean wanting to be the best person possible, and using that level of likeable-ness as a gauge of goodness, if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteYou should listen to the piece Elise. The title is "A Hole Truth," and you can find it in the TAL archives.
ReplyDeleteBy now, I should be an expert on self-respect, right? It doesn't feel that way. But I do think, Lukas, that you touch on a key element of self-respect: how to properly weigh how one evaluates one's own character with the judgments of others. This is complicated because, as you suggest, we should esteem ourselves and at the same time be open others' judgments. How else can we grow? This demands vulnerability, and at times, because of my own personal history, this feels too risky, too painful. Thus begins a cycle of self-doubt, and what Didion calls that "interminable documentary that details one's failings."