Respect.
What is it actually?
Is it admiration? Is it aspiration?
There’s a commonly held fear & respect relationship and there’s a commonly held love & respect relationship.
So obviously these aren’t the same thing.
When we revere someone more devastating than us -be it in the context of fighting, or in business- there is a sense of envy.
The contempt here is in aspiration.
When we have respect for someone who we desire, when our desire is founded in admiring their virtues, their attractive qualities: there is a desire to possess what they have.
When you respect someone’s hands as they try to knock you out, you’re not trying to possess what they have, you’re not looking for them to show you love.
You’re trying to respect yourself in that moment.
And defeating someone who is worthy of respect, in turn gives you more self-respect.
There can be only one.
In this way, do we not respect people who are within our grasp?
Do we not admire a potential mate because they are within our reasonable sphere of seduction?
I find this interesting that respect is encompassing.
It’s easy to respect people who are within reach.
I find that I often feel a sense of respect for certain women, perhaps more often than I feel respect towards men.
Forgive my candor: but perhaps it is the notion that they are but ONE orgasm away from me ‘possessing’ them. Perhaps it is the solace in only giving that orgasm to somebody whom I respect.
Or perhaps it is in the inability to totally possess the emotional intelligence that all of us seek to master. Perhaps it is again, in aspiration.
And I can trust myself to attract the company of respectable women. May their emotional intelligence continually light the way.
That’s not to say that there is no value in being surrounded by people who have little or nothing to offer you, I’m just suggesting we should be discerning about the people who you compel to move towards you.
We are the company we keep.
We should strive to attract people who we admire because we will always possess them.
Coz we rub off on each other.
Where possible, we must attract and assimilate people whom we respect, because you’ll become whoever you hang out with.
Another issue I see quite often is people becoming romantically entangled: whereby one or both people end up operating outside of their integrity…
Boundaries people!
Keep LOOKING!
We are sometimes quick to settle for the first person who’ll “have us” but we really need to be discerning about whether someone is ‘safe’ for us. Do they bring out the best in you, do they enhance your strengths or belittle them out of insecurity.
When someone loses your respect, you have GOT to stop fucking them.
Your inbox gets blown up with needy bullshit and you find yourself responding because that person knows you well enough to push certain buttons, but this isn’t doing either of you any good. The more you respond the more they’ll come to you to try regain that approval that they lost.
It’s innate and compulsive and it’s anxiety driven.
When you respond, you’re feeding that desire to resolve the anxiety and they’re coming to you, looking for respect that you don’t have for them.
If we can avoid this whole paradigm, all together: Be picky.
Don’t fraternize with people who are shitty people, that you have no respect for. They’ll sense it and they’ll try get you to fix it.
But you can’t.
So don’t fuck them.
Block them and move the fuck on.
Punch above your weight next time.
And ALWAYS keep any anxiety to yourself til it subsides, or you’ll become the needy inboxer being ignored for being a psycho.
Show people the respect of not promising them anything.
Show yourself the respect of not getting into a bullshit paradigm where you’re having to avoid someone, or being so needy that people are blocking you.
Respect always works both ways.
ARCHANGEL: Notorious 