Respect and Appreciation

Respect is something that keeps coming up in our lives over and again. And very often it seems to be tied to appreciation. This means that if we get the feeling someone else is not truly appreciating us right there and then at the very moment, it is easy to not just feel unappreciated yet also feel disrespected.

Looking this way at respect and appreciation, it tends to be in an interactive setting; in other words, someone else is doing something to us that makes us feel disrespected and unappreciated.
And this makes situations like this all the more tricky!

Because do we truly expect every person in the room to stop whatever they are doing because we are entering? Or do we just expect that those we know ~ friends and family ~ to stop in their tracks to give us all the time and attention we feel we deserve?
And in putting out that expectation, do we require others to disrespect ~ and in a sense extend the feeling of non-appreciation ~ the people they were interacting with before we showed up?

In other words, can we only feel appreciated and respected if the people around us go out of their way to give us that sense of being appreciated and respected; even if that means we are putting them a position where they would blatantly disrespect someone else, or even themselves?

Ultimately, the question becomes to what extend we respect and appreciate ourselves. Independent from how other people ~ whether those people are friends and/or family, or just someone you meet some place ~ are behaving towards us.
If a stranger jumps the line at a bus stop, chances are we don’t feel disrespected (which, as it turned out, we most definitely are), we don’t take it personally, we simply shrug it off as the other person being a jerk.

The funny thing though is that, while respect tends to be an inner thing ~ something that is based in how much we respect ourselves ~ appreciation indeed can be much more an outer thing. Something we receive from others.
Respect, therefore is linked more to our sense of self worth; while appreciation is often geared to the things we do and how well we are doing them.
Respect is something we should have at all times (at least for ourselves), while ‘perfect timing’ can trigger all kinds of appreciation we may receive from others.

This means that it is a good idea to see respect and appreciation for the different qualities they are; different energies with different directions. As respect comes from the inside and is extended outside of ourselves, while appreciation is something we may receive from outside of ourselves.

Yet both of these qualities can make us feel really good about ourselves and the world around us when we feel them!