RESPECT MATTERS MORE TODAY? HERE’S WHY

When self respect seems like a forgone conclusion, there’s trouble.

“Self respect? Of course I’ve got it, why wouldn’t I?”

Here’s the key: If you don’t have respect for others, how can you respect yourself?

While you’re thinking about a clever excuse of an answer, let’s keep it simple:

You can’t respect yourself if you don’t respect others.

Is there an easy fix?

Respect: People respect others who are impressive for any reason, such as being in authority — like a teacher or cop — or being older — like a grandparent. You show respect by being polite and kind.

Being polite and kind suggests good manners. A good up-bringing. Raised right.

There is a profound lack of self respect in people who challenge everything just to show they’re keeping up with current events.

For example, modern medicine jumps in to keep us well today when a gruesome death was once expected.

These vaccines are a standard for kids from the CDC.

It’s a show of respect to vaccinate your kids to avoid spreading known diseases.

Good health is good manners.

Bad Manners For Bad Health Sends Wrong Message

There are good reasons to avoid the covid vaccine during this pandemic.

“Don’t tell me what to do, man,” is not one of them.

Because of age, health conditions, or other factors, some people should not get certain vaccines or should wait before getting them. Read the guidelines below for each vaccine.

Be an informed citizen before you decide you’re a medial expert and start expounding on why anyone within earshot shouldn’t get a shot.

If you speak to younger people, or are around them, be sensitive to what you say. To them you may be an authority figure with the answers they’ve been looking for.

Your gray hair means something to them you may not be privy to, like a a beloved relative they miss so much that they listen to anyone who reminds them of who is missing in their life.

My readers can rest assured that they’ll never read a post disrespecting education, science, or common sense. I’ve got too much self respect for that sort of bullshit.

It takes medical education to get on board: Swim lessons and life saving in the North Bend pool; CPR and first aide in Boy Scouts; Army medic; father of two, husband of one.

No one jumped up in life saving class with an opinion different than the teachers; no one corrected the firemen teaching CPR; the Army doesn’t abide with individual opinions expressed freely.

Staying married has a few Army characteristics if you don’t know about either.

Self respect comes into play with polite responses while learning more than you want to know.

But, hey, you know better than the instructors and want to send a message to the rest of the class to show you know better?

Show some respect and sit down.

Learning The Ropes Of Self Respect

I had a nice talk with my kid about growing up when I did versus when he did.

We came to the conclusion that I inflicted myself with hardships I could have avoided and didn’t.

The kicker was that I inflicted them with some of the same hardships.

A big decision in high school was playing sports. I was ready to quit all sports if my teams didn’t want to compete, and there was some of that going around.

The football team was weak, the basketball team sketchy, and I was a football and basketball guy. Then I got hurt sophomore year during football season and had time to reflect.

The varsity coach was mailing it in, the assistants accused players of focusing on the dance after the game instead of the game. That was some halftime pepper.

I decided I’d give sports one more chance before hanging it up.

Up to that point I’d never wrestled, been to a wrestling match, or knew the wrestling coaches. No one in my family had ever wrestled.

I went in, learned a few things, wrestled all through high school, a year of college wrestling, and a try-out with the All-Army wrestling team. My younger brother wrestled and coached wrestling. He joined my high school coach in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Both of my sons benefited from being wrestlers, though I’m not sure they enjoyed the experience as much as they would have if they’d had better coaching.

It’s true that after wrestling, everything else is easier, including the Walk Of Shame after a failure.

Walk Of Shame?

In life it’s hard to know if someone is on the Walk Of Shame, or just having a bad day.

Is an unvaccinated person on a ventilator in an ICU unit on the Walk Of Shame while life saving surgeries are postponed for lack of ICU beds?

They are certainly having a bad enough day.

How about a vaccinated television screamer telling an audience the virus that has killed over 800K is a hoax, or a government plot, or tactic to steal those freedoms, like free speech?

This is an article on why to get a vaccine:

Front-line physicians describe how vaccination affects patients in latest Covid wave.

Who would know better? Nurses, but let’s hear from the doctors making the rounds.

“The general trend that I’m seeing is, if you’re boosted and you get Covid, you really just at worst end up with bad cold symptoms. It’s not like before where you were coughing, couldn’t say sentences and were short of breath,” said Dr. Matthew Bai, an emergency medicine physician at Mount Sinai Queens in New York City. 

If you’ve been around people who live with respiratory issues, then you’ve seen how alarming shortness of breath is. It could be their last breath and you can’t do a thing about it.

Is that reason enough to get vaccinated and boosted? Yes, it is.

Dr. Joseph Varon, chief of critical care services and the Covid-19 unit at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center, said of the roughly 50 patients admitted to the hospital’s Covid unit in the last four weeks, 100 percent of them were unvaccinated.

He said patients who needed to be admitted typically have “shortness of breath, high fevers, being dehydrated like crazy.” He said those who are unvaccinated also “have more illness. What I mean by more illness is more pneumonia, not just a little bit of pneumonia, you have a lot of pneumonia.”

“The people that are coming in unvaccinated have a much larger burden of illness in the lungs than those who are vaccinated,” he said.

Carrying The Burden Of Doing The Right Thing

After talking to older people over the years one common wish I’ve heard is they don’t want to become a burden to their friends, family, or anyone else.

They are talking self respect. If they can’t ‘git ‘er done’ themselves, then it’s not important enough to do.

Now I’m an older person? Maybe you too?

I served as a home caregiver for my father in law for five years. He was a proud man laid low by Parkinson’s. Every day I worked on his self respect by asking him questions he could answer.

It was no pity party. Every night I put him to bed and prepped him to be a good date when his wife came into the room to read Zane Grey to him.

My trick was making everything look effortless and graceful. It’s a caregiver thing to keep a patient from getting more depressed.

Dodging the covid vaccine and ending up in the ICU with a hose down your neck is a burden on everyone who knows you, heard of you, or saw you laid up through a window.

Dying in there is a burden on the hospital staff. No one wants to lose a patient on their shift.

If you’ve been around death, you know the drill. It’s part clean up, part arrangements, part sorrow, and all sad.

Coming out of the ICU and still talking that anti-vax, anti-mask talk is a sign of no respect for placing an unwanted burden on others, and a huge lack of self respect in them.

There are better ways to throw your life away than neglect and ignorance. No one want’s to be remembered as ‘That guy.”

Why I Write About Self Respect

I write for the five minutes and twenty six seconds from Oregon readers, the fifty five seconds in Ohio, the minute and twenty six seconds in Tennessee.

I write for the thirty one seconds in Japan, the eleven seconds in Ireland, the nine minutes and forty three seconds in Israel.

How’s your self respect lining up today?