Self respect

For the vast majority of my life, except for rare and short moments, I’ve been feeling out of place.

I am very good at adapting so I kept this feeling in check. Nobody would know that I hated the study I did. I didn’t understand or share the concern and values of my fellow students. I didn’t like the values promoted in the companies I worked for. I wasn’t feeling like my contribution was really understood or valued.

To me, this felt absolutely normal. You have to work to make a living and work is often unpleasant. This injunction is deeply ingrained inside me. Now that I think of it, it is what made me feel depressed and unhappy for the biggest part of my life.

You may find this sad or even pity me at this point, don’t. The worse is yet to come: not only did I feel unhappy and out of place, not only did I try to hide or even deny this feeling… I was blaming other people for it.

Yes, you heard me right, YOU were responsible for my unhappiness. How did you dare treating me like that?

So what changed you may ask?

What changed is that I worked hard towards taking responsibility for myself, my actions and my feelings. Everyday, for a long time.

I met wonderful people who made me realize — sometimes even against their will or mine — what was going on in me. They showed me their humanity and in theirs I found mine. I started seeing the path I was on and the learning I was doing, I started to — slowly — accept myself as I was today and not crave for changes. Changes, as I learned, are everywhere. Everything changes all the time. My task is to be present and to accept them without the fighting I was used to.

This realization helped me be present to myself. It made me a more loving person, starting with myself and all the parts inside me which I was trying to ignore and change. Consequently, it helped me love and accept other people with their differences and their struggle. Respect, I learned, is something that you cannot give to anybody if you don’t give it to you first.