What Respect Means to Me

This is an essay I wrote for an assignment for a high school health class a couple of years ago.

Respect is an incredibly important thing for coworkers, classmates, family members and friends to incorporate into their daily lives. It allows people to understand each other’s feelings and personal ideas, and it allows them to be understanding of themselves. However, respect means something different to everyone, and everyone has different ideas of what they want other people to do to show respect. My ideas of respect and the actions I take to show it are very important to me, and I constantly attempt to show the same respectful actions I expect to be shown back from my classmates, peers, and family.

The main thing I do to attempt to show respect is to be kind to those around me. I try to respect their personal spaces and boundaries and do my best not to overstep them, and I try to understand the situations that those around me are in and how those situations affect their personal lives. I attempt to do whatever I can to cheer them up if they appear to be in a bad mood or just try to make them laugh or smile in general. I try to consistently tell the truth and expect others around me to feel comfortable in doing the same. Finally, I expect those around me, particularly my closest of friends, to have a certain amount of trust of me and feel comfortable in sharing personal information with me because of that trust.

I feel I have done a fairly good job of showing over the many years I have been going to school at Nederland. I feel I have formed a fairly strong reputation for being kind, fun-loving, and very energetic. I attempt to work with my classmates the best that I can whenever I am assigned a group project, and that I get along with them pretty well. I also feel I have formed a good base towards respecting myself and the life I live. There are times where inconsequential worries start getting to me on a personal level despite the fact that I realize they are completely irrational. However, I overall appreciate the life I have led thus far and the person I am today, and want to continue to try my best both socially and academically.

To me, respect means a complete understanding of someone’s beliefs and ideas. It is being able to put other’s ideas and beliefs before your own, particularly if those ideas or beliefs harm someone else. It is being able to comprehend where someone comes from in an argument, opinion, or reaction to something and understanding these beliefs, despite the fact that you personally don’t agree with them. It is being able to change yourself for the better and understand the weaknesses and strengths of both yourself and those around you and how you can work around those weaknesses. Finally, respect is being able to make people feel safe, comfortable, or happy around you, and for them to do the same for you.

Respect can mean many different things to many different people. However, the same basic ideas are all present in everyone’s ideas of what it means. Kindness, thoughtfulness, and empathy are all basic principles in everyone’s idea of respect. Being able to understand people's beliefs and opinions is one of the most important things anyone can do. If people can demonstrate the principles of respect and understand each other, the world will have a better understanding as to what it means to be human.