Respect means a lot of different thing to people. For me I suppose it means, every human being needs to feel and deserves to be respected. I try to understand everyone has a different perspective and unique feelings. I can take their feelings into consideration and see that they have value. I treat other people the way I want to be treated. I never intentionally set out to ridicule, embarrass or hurt other people.
Today I was having a discussion with someone about a health problem I've had over the past month. I relayed to this person what I believe was the cause of it. Well he immediately started to verbally bash a particular individual that I mentioned. He was angry over our discussion. I never really understood why he had a problem with XYZ before. He never liked her. He continued on to belittle XYZ and said many untruthful things. In the past when he said distasteful words about XYZ, I always stood up and defended her name because the comments were untrue.
XYZ had done some hurtful things to me which i should be angry about but i still didn't feel like they deserved to be treated in a demeaning way. This time I suppose it was different. It was different because I was no longer friends with them. Although we don't stay in contact anymore I still have protected her name and corrected people that made false allegations about XYZ. He couldn't understand why I was doing that. After all I went through he thought i would be angry and go along with the name calling. But I couldn't. At that moment I felt conflicted. Why was I protecting and standing up for someone that obviously couldn't care less about me. We have no interaction with each other and didn't part on good terms. So why was I still saying nice things about someone that clearly doesn't respect me? Why was I protecting her image? Was I wrong to show a little respect?
In my heart I know being angry and vindictive does nothing to foster peace. In light of all that has happened I still am considerate of their feelings. Does this make me weak? Should I have agreed with the lies even though I'm not friends with her anymore? It clearly had me puzzled. Then I realized it is not in my nature to carry on being disrespectful to someone just because I felt that they mistreated me. As much as I want to say "yea, you deserve it!”,I can't. In respecting someone that is has hurt me I learned to cherish my own feelings. Right or wrong no one deserves to be lied about.