A Working Definition of Self-Respect

I am not a stoic by nature. Quite the opposite, in fact. I generally tend to look for the easiest paths in my daily walk that maximize my comfort and minimize my inconvenience. That pretty much puts me, in my opinion, right in line with the mainstream of American (and possibly generally human) culture. People want easy transportation, easy entertainment, easy food and drink, easy work, and easy relationships. And they want it all cheap and now!

Truth be told, though, this is not a very useful way to live my life. I am an individual human, but I also live in relation to others as a member of society. In both cases, life imposes limits on my freedom to "run my own show". The most obvious example is the need for me to go to work and earn a living.

While at work, I am under someone else's authority, expected to perform my duties and fill out my allotted time at my workplace with "gainful employment". This means furthering the business aims of my employer, not furthering my own particular, personal agenda. Now within the context of these limitations, I do quite well. I AM a productive, conscientious worker, making efficient use of my time and being attentive to the demands of my job. In other words, I respect my employer by actively and consistently attending to my job assignment. Once I clock out and leave my workplace, though, my time belongs to me (in a manner of speaking). So the question is, now that I have shown my respect to my employers by efficiently attending to their agenda in the time allotted for me, how am I going to show my respect to myself in the time allotted to me?

Well, for starters, I need an agenda for my own self. Unless it involves stuffing my face and slothfully staring for hours at the boob tube, this agenda will probably be composed of goals for me to invest my time in pursuing. And it will force me to make personal decisions about where to invest my time and efforts, decisions that will necessarily force me to impose some stoic-seeming discipline on myself.

I don't think anyone deliberately sets out to crash at home after work in front of their television, but it is probably the predominant behavior pattern in our country. People show their respect for others at their workplace, but when the day is done they won't show the same respect for themselves by pursuing their own interests. Instead, they seem to attribute positive traits like "responsibility" and "discipline" to their jobs as if they were burdens imposed on them from the big, bad, outside world that they have a right to shed when they have "free" time. But responsibility and discipline are traits of respect, be they aimed at others or one's self.

There is no need to always play the stoic and give up pleasures; pleasures are part of the "spice of life", as a friend of mine likes to put it on her radio spots. But our personal, "free" time needs to be governed by our own agendas. And we need to attend to them with the same degree of seriousness that we employ on our paid jobs. In other words, we need to respect ourselves.