Self-Respect

“Respect yourself and others will respect you.” Confucius


What does self-respect actually mean? Does it have anything to do with reputation
or self-esteem?


Contrary to what most people know, “respect” and “self-respect” are two different
terms. People usually have misconceptions about these two different ideas. Actually these terms are total opposites of each other. “Respect” is a term depending on other people’s thoughts and their approach. But as it can obviously be seen “self-respect” is something that’s about the thoughts and approach of a person to his or her self. As a result, self-respect and respect are complete opposites, similar to the concept of “individual vs. society.”


Respect is something that is hard to earn, yet very easy to lose. To earn someone’s respect, first you have to respect yourself. If you don’t even have that, why should “others” respect you? In this short time period we call ”life”, everything is requited, which is why people who do not respect themselves will not be respected
by others.


Being respectful to yourself starts with being honest to yourself. I believe honesty is one of the most important character traits. Honesty brings reliability and reliability brings trust when you are interacting with other people. Accepting one’s own faults is something that can be defined as divine. Only people who have self-respect can accept their own faults. People who have bad reputation, otherwise known as people who are notorious can also have self-respect, meaning, even convicts, gangsters and mafias can have self-respect. As long as one accepts his or her own fault, they can be considered having self-respect.


Even criminals want to be respected by the people around them, who are usually
others in their ward. As a matter of fact, they are obsessed with the term “respect”. They can have bad reputation, but, at the end of the day, they are still very much honest to themselves and they accept their faults, in order to be respected by others in the community they belong to.


I can say that I have self-respect without any hesitation. I’m generally honest to myself. By “generally” I mean as long as I am okay with the situation or the consequences. I believe, and know, that being honest about something is the first
and also the best thing to do. I’m aware that I cannot run away from the truth nor can I hide the truth. This way of thinking helps me with being honest to myself,

which evidently brings self-respect.

Creativity

What is creativity? Can people be creative or are they born that way?

There are more than 6 billion human beings on the planet that we are living on right now, called “earth”. On this planet of ours, there are various kinds of people. God has created every single person diligently; there is only one of us in the world. This action can be named as creativity. So its process begins with our existence. Every human being has it; the only thing you have to do is to know how to use it. People who have outstandingly creativity and imagination are named, inventors. They have the special ability to create things that were once beyond existence. Before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, nobody could even imagine such an invention. It was him and his “outside the box” imagination that created what we use so often today.

I believe creativity depends on ambition. If a man has no dreams, he is not a visionary, thus he cannot be considered creative. Imaginative people are basically ones who refuse to accept pre-existing ideas, unlike the rest who don’t. People who are creative are quite different in terms of their dreaminess. They have their own ideas and their own limitations. In fact, from my point of view, they have no limitations whatsoever. Restrictions constrain dreams; in other words, they constrain creativity. ‘No limitations’ is a concept that allows, even encourages people to be different than the rest of the society. When I think about it, I realize having no limitations and expecting others to have none is simply a dream that is very hard to come true. There are many elements in our lives that force us to retain limitations. I believe God is the one who set them up. He is the reason why parents, jobs, responsibilities, even social networks limit our lives. People who have no restrictions are the ones who have the perfect backgrounds to become a person of creativity; but sadly, people with limitations who do not create anything are the majority. If you ask me, it’s all because of the responsibility-free lives. Having no limitations make most of the people. They become so relaxed that they do not even dare to think about something new. People who have no limitations but have the desire to find or create something new are the ones who stand out in the society as genius inventors.

 

To be completely honest, I don’t think I’m that of a creative person. I usually accept the “truth”, the rules and the norms that our society has set for us. I don’t try to make my own “rights” or norms. I wonder if that is the reason for my ordinariness and mundanity. I don’t like being too different from the people around me, but that doesn’t mean I’m a copycat. Needless to say, I have my own ideas and thoughts and beliefs, but they fit the society’s standards as well.

I’m not creative, nor do I possess the ability of over imagination, because the two are things that spring from instinct. That’s why people cannot force themselves to be creative. Creativity has to be included in a personality: You can’t force it out. It also depends on inspiration, something very hard to come by. You can never know if someone’s creative or not, simply by looking at them for inspiration is a product of the mind. People keep their secrets in shadows.

Creativity is a character trait that is easily affected by others and life conditions. The idea of a “social network” holds the biggest role in creativity. Human psychology adapts easily. If one’s circle of people are different and original, and are not afraid to be so, then they will surely affect that one. One’s thoughts and own rights will have changed with social surrounding.

Snooping

What does snooping really mean and why is it irritating?

Snooping is an action, which is done by every human being. People snoop on their family and friends. From my point of view it’s the most irritating thing to do to a person. It can be done involuntary, people who care sometimes actually snoops rather than just giving some advice and then leaving the final decision to us. I think being protective is okay but like in any other case, people should know their limits. On the other hand people who are not aware of their limits or doesn’t care about their limits do snooping also. Snooping in a protective way can be tolerated from my point of view, but nobody than my family can snoop me including my friends.

Snooping somebody is a very abrasive action to do. Being snooped is even worse. I think I must have designated limits with people around me. Being to close to some person makes that person think that he or she has control over you, which is the first major step to be snooped by somebody. I as myself always had my abutment with my friends, which were obvious. I think that nobody should pry into another's affairs. Even though if the person is a close friend of yours, you should never let he or she take the control. Once you lose your distance with somebody you can never go back. People would use their conversance in a way that would work for them. People are benefit-focused human beings. Which means that they will always want things to work how they want.

Sometimes I think of why people would snoop on their friends, which is in a prowling way. Parents actions can be named as “being protective” rather than snooping, but the bargain that’s done by the “close friends” can definitely be defined as “snooping”. There are various reasons for that and I want to list some of them, which are actually the most obvious ones. First being jealous of somebody. If somebody were jealous of you, he or she would definitely snoop you, because they feel some kind of deficiency. Between girls this is mainly because of beauty or having a boy friend. The girl who has a boy friend would like to spend some time with her boy friend in addition to the time she spends with her friends. But her friends would act so selfish and wouldn’t let her to be with her boyfriend. Because they aren’t attractive physically and socially as she is and don’t win approval from the boys around them they would more likely to hang out with the girl who has boy friend in order to appease their ego. In addition; there is also another possibility that could lead to snooping or cause snooping and that’s the relationships inside the family. If you have the perfect life in other’s point of view, be ready to be snooped, because you have everything that the others want to have. You will be snooped and be treated, as if you are his or her family. She or he will be seeking the lack of love by getting attached to you. Getting him or her attached to you would lead you to a dead end, which is of no use for you. This convenience of close “friendship” would cause your friend to think that he or she has control over you. If such is the case, the best thing to do is to keep your distance otherwise you may end up being irritated. Separating from a good friend of yours because of their snoopy behavior is the last thing you to happen. So keep your distance from the beginning; if you don’t want lose him or her permanently.

This part of my blog is for “snoopers”:

Time to take a look at the situation from a different perspective and emphasize; has anybody ever snooped you? How did that make you feel?

I’m sure that everybody has been snooped at least once in his or her life. And I’m sure that even the people who are snoopers have also been snooped at least once before. I can actually emphasize well and depending on my own experience and what I’ve seen around is that there is nobody who likes to be snooped. If you also don’t like to be snooped than take your time think a bit and please stop snooping. It gets you nowhere; it’s nothing than embezzling people who are well-intentioned, people who are too good than they should be.

In any kind of relationship, showing respect to the person who is towards you is a MUST. If there is no respect, than there is no “proper” communication. People who are aware of the term “respect” are the people who would not snoop because snooping is disrespecting somebody’s individualism in a way, or in other words trying to restrain somebody.

Individuality

In our lives are we really individuals or are we attached to other people who are around us?

individuality

I actually think that I’m an individual person. I think of that because I can manage myself by myself. I don’t need to be overhauled by anyone including my parents. My father actually has helped me to become a real individual. His actions have rasped my personality and built my character. He helped me to become the person that I’m at the moment.

I have been in New York for a week and a half and I’ve seen various people on the streets that are individuals. They have their self-confidence so they don’t care about the people around them and what the people around them think about them.  They are mostly all by themselves without feeling to be attached to any other person. These people on the streets were mainly adults; I haven’t seen any teenagers by themselves.

self-confidence

I think that being individual is a yield of age. As people grow up and become more mature, they earn their self- confidence and they start to think and act as individuals. I reached the maturity for individuality when I was at the age of 12. I was sent to a summer school for 4 weeks in the UK, which built my self-confidence. I had the experience of being all by myself at a really early age. Most of my friends have been going to summer schools since 2 years so because of that they have matured to be individuals at a later than I did. In a different way I feel way comfortable when I’m all by myself. It’s mainly because I see that I can manage my stuff and life also I can take care of myself. I have learned to take responsibility.

Being a "World Citizen"

I’m in the summer program abroad again for the 5^th. Because there are lots of people around different lieu of the world I have been seeing a lot of different kinds of teenagers just like me. There are about 1600 teenagers and I know about only 100 of them. Because it is a school in the city, people go directly to downtown after their courses. As I walk in the campus I take a glimpse at the people who passes me and goes to their classes and I actually think none of them are "individual"s. In terms of individual I’m not meaning being anti-social. There is a thin line in between these two terms, at least from my point of view.

People who are in this summer program are like colonies. People go and hang around with the people who are from their culture or their country. They feel as foreigners if they try to get attached to a person who is from another country. I actually hang out with the people from Florida, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Spain, and Guatemala etc. I don’t feel like a foreigner when I’m with them. My father has always told me to be individual and he wanted me to be a “World Citizen”. In terms of that, he wanted me to be able to live and work in any rubric of the World. So I listened to his advice and I tried to hang out with the people who are not from my district. It actually worked well and now I can communicate with all of them. I learned a bit of their culture, their approach to life and also I learned new facts about places in the world that I have not been to. So I guess being with other people rather then your friends and making the “other people” your friends is being individual.

What I see in the campus is colonies of people who are from the same country or from the same social network. People do not have the courage of being alone or by themselves, nobody can eat alone at the cafeteria or nobody can go for a walk by him or her self. Nobody can attend excursions without being attached to some another person.

I as a teenager think that it’s something not very desirable to still not being an individual. At the moment I’m 17 years old and in a short time I will be leaving my friends and my family behind to study in some part of the US. I’m aware of that I must take my responsibilities by myself to be an individual and I must not be attached to another person so intensely. Because nothing or nobody is permanent in this short time period named as “life”. I know a person who is attached so strongly to her mother and I actually think that’s the most wrong thing to do. Actually the girl is trying to be individual and wants to become individual but her mother is a control freak and so wants her to be in control of herself. This girl is a teenager who is 17 and still has never been to some place all by herself. Her mother treats her, as she is a baby. She doesn’t let the girl become an individual. I have no right to comment on people’s way of raising children but from my point of view and by how I was raised it is something really wrong. I think everybody should have the opportunity of being alone and everybody at least should experience what is to be alone and individual at an early age.


I would love to read your comments on my "Individuality" blog.
As I'm a non native speaker of English, please also feel free to comment on my grammar-spelling-vocabulary :)