Respect is understood in many ways. The meaning of the word is often interchangeable with “consideration.” “Consider your surroundings, turn down that loud racket.” Substitute “consider” with “respect” and you have: “Respect those around you and turn down your music, some of us cringe at the crude language that artist uses.”
I used to groan whenever my mother told me to “respect my elders.” Who were they to know what was going on in my young, imaginative brain? They were old, jaded from experience, and were left with no hope or creativity. Why should I respect the advice they had to offer? Why should I even pay any attention to them when, more than likely, they would ignore the true meaning of what I was saying and put words in my mouth.
Take for example the following:
A child plays outside in the dirt, his hands and fingers black from mud, a bowl resting on the ground beside his foot. He is making a soup for his sick mother to eat. Inside it are many of the healing herbs Mother Earth gives; berries, flowers, grass, leaves, bits of bark. The child stirs it all up in the bowl with a stick, adding a little water from the hose. He brings his concoction inside, ready to give it to his mother. The boy’s father, seeing the mess and dirt the kid tracked inside, takes the soup and looks at it suspiciously.
“What are you planning to do with this?” the father asks.
“Mommy’s sick, I wanted to make her feel better,” is the reply. The dad looks at his wife and then back down at his son.
“Son, this won’t do her any good. Bring her some chicken noodle soup instead.”
“Of course I wasn’t going to let her eat it! I just wanted to surprise her and explain all the good health the herbs offer if she did decide to try it,” the boy tries to take the soup back, but his father dumps it outside instead.
“Sorry, but that would only have made her feel worse.” The boy’s eyes fill with tears of disappointment. His father didn’t understand. He couldn’t really see the meaning behind each ingredient of the soup. Flower petals would bring a smile to mother’s face as she thought of the bright daisies in her garden. The red berries would remind her of the color and warmth that awaited her wellness. The grass would make her think of squishing her toes in the luscious green carpet that blanketed her lawn. The leaves from the trees would remind her that there are many other days where she will be well, and that this molted, sad day would indeed pass; just like there are many, many leaves on the trees sick and unhealthy ones will fall and be replaced by stronger leaves.
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How does respect play into this story? How can this one simple, short account explain what I consider the single most important problem that is facing society today? Simple. Where is the respect?
Remember that life is not made up of the awesome, memorable moments – where dad wins the lottery, or the next-door neighbor gives out a free puppy. It is not these few hiccups in time, often with long intervals in between that define who we are. It is in the every day actions with which we identify. It gives us appreciation for life. We do not notice the sun until it leaves, complaining about the clouds today, while yesterday we didn’t even acknowledge the sun’s warmth.
Remember that every day counts and we should do our best to seize every opportune moment. The father didn’t respect the boy’s thoughtfulness. Here his son was only trying to help his sick mother, building for her a creation with meaning and love, yet his dad discarded it as though it was a piece of junk.
Perhaps, I realize as I write this essay, it is not the lack of respect in today’s society that disappoints me, but instead the lack of appreciation. I no longer see my fellow citizens appreciate the gifts life gives us. Remember being grateful whenever mother made those delicious cookies? Or being content just to sit on dad’s lap and read books? Now we take for granted the car that drives us a mere ten blocks away to a restaurant in walking distance. We live each day believing we’ll wake up to see the next, and the next, and the next. We let society create us in to creatures of habit: going to work, coming home to attend to the house and children, preparing dinner, cleaning up, worrying over tomorrow’s schedule, and finally succumbing to a fitful sleep. Rush, rush, rush.
What about the dying rosebush next door that we pass by when we walk to our car? What about the worm lying on the sidewalk, unable to cross to the other side? Do we forget to appreciate life, life in all beings other than our own? Nature is life, too. Are we really that selfish?
I myself am one of these ungrateful citizens. I have to force myself not to re-park my car after realizing the nearest door is closed for maintenance. I see overweight people, smoking and drinking people, drug users all abusing their body. They are not thankful for the beautiful instrument they were born with.
I read in a book, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. In it there was the city of “Reality”, where people walked quickly with their heads down, and the buildings were invisible. No one paid any attention to where they were going, and so the beauty of life became dull and colorless.
If such things were possible in our world, I believe everything would become invisible in our eyes, including even people – our neighbors, our coworkers, the cashiers behind the registers. The saddest part is – I don’t believe we’d even notice.
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I really loved your story of the little boy making his mother some get-well soup. We all need to learn to respect each other more. It seems that people demonstrate less and less respect and compassion to the rest of the world every day. We all need to pay more attention to the people we run into on a daily basis and see them as people and not obstacles that we just need to get around in order to reach our own destinations. We need to stop and smell the flowers, so to speak.
I really enjoyed reading your blog!