I'm no good at making demands. One of my toughest challenges in this life has been confrontation and getting respect. I used to ( and still do) believe that if I was nice and respectful of others, I would receive the same in return. It wad how I wad raised. What I was taught. But the older I get in this technological based world, I am quickly learning that is not the case at all. There is no longer lessons of courtesy or manners bring taught in homes. So far gone is our society, that even some of our elders have forgotten these basic lessons. I find what is considered courtesy & respect varies from culture to culture as well as between sexes and sexualities. Respect is no longer a universal language. Its now broken into bits, digested according to individual ideas. Its become such a complex and complicated system to navigate that half the time, I can only seem to show respect by holding my tongue. Shrinking my presence to the satisfactuon of others.
But what does that leave for me? What does that mean for me? If in order to respect another, I feel I must disappear? In essence, disrespect myself.. I ponder this fine line between courtesy and respect deeply as I watch my children play the game all children figure out eventually. I call it playing against the middle. They ask one parent for a thing, if that parent says no, they move on to the other parent or another adult until someone says yes. Eventually someone says yes, and that is the moment the inital parent must decide if they will allow it to happen or intervene and be cast as the "bad guy". Usually I allow it to just be, out of respect for my elder and an unwillingness to enter into unwanted frustration. But I sit in wonder, if this is the right course of action. If my silence is the transformative power turning me into a dormat. And what is the lesson my children extract from my inaction? Do they recognize my constant need for peace? Or do they too learn, to take their mother for granted?
C. Joi Sanchez
www.jsanschez.wordpress com
