SELF-RESPECT

I think that the word Respect involves a lot of things and has many meanings. We can talk about self-respect, about respect for others, no matter who they are (friends, relatives, teachers, young or old people, rich or poor), the respect for our traditions and customs, for nature and animals, for our own opinions and feelings and for the others.
Every day we find ourselves in the situation of using this word and even though we heard about the importance of respect and we think that we are respectful we often forget to use it and we don’t apply what we have learned in our daily-life.
Unlike other values that we have received at our birth, the respect develops in time, grows at the same time with us and it also depends a lot on the education we were given.
I would like to point out the importance of self-respect because I think that to succeed in life and to be happy we must be self-trustful and respect ourselves. How can we ask others to respect us when we don’t? We are all born different and we can’t have the same opinions, thoughts, ideas and intelligence and that’s why we must respect our own point of view. People are different and that’s what makes them special and we should respect them and never forget to respect ourselves in the first place.
We mustn’t let anyone destroy our self-respect because then we won’t have the power to decide by ourselves, to live our life the way we want and those surrounding us will try to change us and influence our decisions and our way of life. We will think then that everything we do is wrong and we will lose our self-respect.
Even in my class I’ve noticed that some of my colleagues don’t respect their mind, their opinions and thoughts and they don’t trust themselves and are afraid to express their point of view because they think that others will laugh at them. So I think it is important to respect our memory, our mind and maybe then others will respect them, too.
It is also important to have self-respect for our physical appearance. I often see at school, or when I go out with my friends, boys and girls that make fun of those who are different: that are not so good-looking, or are too fat, or too poor and those teenagers are depressed and when they go out they put their head in the ground maybe because they are fed up or don’t want to hear, or don’t have the strength to hear anymore the insults and the jokes about them. It’s sad to see those kind of people that lost their self-respect and live their life hating those who make fun of them and despising themselves.
But I must say that I’ve also seen brave persons standing up to those who want to make fun of them and more than that they prove to the others that they are even better than them. These people impress me with their strong self-respect.
As a conclusion I would like to underline the fact that we must value and respect ourselves, we must show who we really are, our qualities and faults and we mustn’t let anyone destroy our self-respect.

Sasu Corina, year 3
C.N. Stefan Cel Mare – Suaceva ( Romania)