<\/a><\/p>\nThe dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others \u2014 who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O\u2019Hara, is something people with courage can do without.<\/p>\n
To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals with one\u2019s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There\u2019s the glass you broke in anger, there\u2019s the hurt on X\u2019s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.<\/p>\n
[\u2026]<\/p>\n
[C]haracter \u2014 the willingness to accept responsibility for one\u2019s own life \u2014 is the source from which self-respect springs.<\/p>\n
Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts.<\/p>\n
[\u2026]<\/p>\n
[S]elf-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one\u2019s head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower.<\/p>\n
[\u2026]<\/p>\n
To have that sense of one\u2019s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out \u2014 since our self-image is untenable \u2014 their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone\u2019s Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meting the next demand made upon us.<\/p>\n
It is the phenomenon sometimes called \u2018alienation from self.\u2019 In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves \u2014 there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.<\/p>\n
via Joan Didion on Self-Respect | Brain Pickings<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joan Didion wrote this in 1968 on self-respect. I think it could just as well be called self-compassion… It also sounds like an element of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[65,267,432,435],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}