systemadministratorclu:

jeunefillevulgaire-deactivated2:

I realized something that’s pretty hard to understand recently : people who don’t treat you well aren’t going to treat you better if you work harder. You shouldn’t have to work to get someone’s respect, like you don’t earn someone treating you well.

This is literally so counter to what I’ve been told my whole life: “you have to GIVE respect to GET respect”. If you don'tgive it, you won’t ever get it". But at the same time I’d get told “it’s not okay to be DISRESPECTFUL” and I now wish I had countered with “they didn’t give me respect so they shouldn’t get it from me.” And I’m pretty sure the universe would’ve imploded, at least to the people who told me these two conflicting things.

Hah.

Actually I feel like it should implode from the very paradox inherent in “you have to give respect to get respect”

Because if respect can only be given in response to getting respect, then how does that cycle ever start in the first place? It would HAVE to begin with someone giving respect without ever having received it.

(and the people who try and tell you how to live life… they always want you to be that person. They never think you should ever get to expect someone else to be that person. Even though that’s exactly what they’re expecting from you.)

(human empathy. I hear rumors it exists, somewhere. Unconfirmed.)