The gift of respect

About half a year ago a man made a comment that stunned me. It was right after the orals for my second doctorate - in the Netherlands. This professor from Belgium was a member of my examination Committee, and he said, "It's great to enlarge your consciousness about the whereabouts of all living creatures, but at the same time it must be very frustrating, because you become aware of so much suffering."

He hit the nail on the head: it ís a painful experience. I have shared my perspectives rather frequently with my reading audience in the last few years. I remember writing about my visit to Chicago,  a wonderful city, where tourists love to take a sightseeing ride in a beautifully painted carriage, towed by some horses. Unfortunately, there are few who are concerned about the suffering of these animals that are now forced to participate in the heavy downtown traffic with thousands of cars and motorcycles around them, and have to inhale poisonous exhaust fumes from close-by, minute after minute. Consequence: tears in Chicago for me. I also recall a visit to the LA zoo, where I realized, again in tears, that I would never again enter a zoo, particularly after seeing the miserable elephant in the hot sun and the gorilla that, in sheer misery, was pulling grass in his cage with his back towards the public. Watching television can be traumatic as well, because horses are abused in many Westerns without any concern for their wellbeing. And then there are the scenes of bears, tigers, or other wild animals, who have to suffer from training for many months before they are ready for the film shots, and then get trashed afterwards or, if they are lucky, land at the Wildlife Way Station, an ailing non-governmental organization, that tries heroically to offer a home to those who are now unfit for wildlife.

Of course the awareness reaches beyond just animals. About human suffering there’s so much to say that I don't even know where to start: the millions of undernourished, uneducated children, and their powerless mothers, while there are mammoth companies nearby, with stinking rich managers, insensitive to the gross inequalities that they deliberately maintain? Or senior citizens who, after a life of hard work for their families, land in senior homes where they are snubbed, and where their children and grandchildren sporadically pay a visit, because granny can't do much for them anymore? Or miserly doctors who have converted their vocation into pure business and only want to "serve" where they can rummage a lot of money? Many of these supposed medical caregivers are no longer interested in the cause of a problem, because it takes too much time and energy and it brings in relatively little money. Instead, they prefer to write out recipes for expensive drugs that smother the symptoms, and preferably cause side-effects, upon which they can write out some more recipes, thus maintaining their patients’ dependency.

Last week a dear family friend became the victim of such neglect: a prominent specialist neglected her problem, so now her young children are preparing for their first mother's day without a mother.

Having respect for all beings hurts and is often difficult too. After all, how do you respect those who have no respect for the well-being of others? That’s hard. It’s tragic too.

The gift of self-respect

It is only when we face enormous challenges that we realize what a gift self-respect is. Some of us may be well aware how hard it can be to maintain it, when we seem to lose everything else! Life can be unpredictable: today we can consider ourselves in full control and on top of the world, and tomorrow we may hit rock-bottom. For others, who witness our plight from a distance, it may seem ridiculous when we feel worthless, but they may not be able to relate to our experience and the depth of our feelings.

However, even when we go through extremely tough times, we should consider the one we always see when we look into the mirror. We owe it to that person to maintain our self-respect. I recently read in a Surinamese newspaper that a woman, who was desperate because her husband had intentions to leave her for a younger woman, visited a traditional healer ("bonumang") to save her marriage. The man did not only charge her quite some money for his "services," but advised her to do the creepiest thing: she had to visit a local cemetery in the middle of the night and sleep for three hours on a grave occupied with a dead body! The healer claimed that other people who did the same thing had been able to save their marriage.

The saddest detail of the story above is not whether the woman ultimately did what the bonumang advised her to do or not, but rather that she lost her self-respect by even trying to keep a partner who obviously wanted to be somewhere else with such a grotesque act. She may not have looked at it as such, but trying to keep someone against their will either indicates tremendous weakness or ruthless selfishness. Money or perceived security may, of course, have been a driving motive as well. But this woman has a long road ahead of regaining her sense of self-worth, and if she ever finds it, she will still have to try to forgive herself for her desperate behavior. And that can be a tough one!