Happiness is not free yet the feeling you get when you attain it is priceless. I would choose happiness over self-respect any day. I know it may sound weird but we humans forget that we are selfish. Everyone knows it, but many do not acknowledge this fact. By nature, I am a selfish human and I would choose to be happy rather than have self-respect because I think that when you are happy you eventually get the respect, but moreover you live a better life.
Currently, this world is full of despair and people literally do not stop to smell the roses. Smell the roses people! It will make you happier. The different scents can increase serotonin levels, and maybe even boost your endorphins. Happiness is something I highly value and I love to be able to just smile and be content. People do not take advantage of happiness and others are not granted the opportunity. Sure, gaining self-respect comes with a sense of pride but I also think that it is very egoistical. I know I was talking about selfishness, but there is a difference between being selfish for me and prideful/egoistic against others.
Here’s my thing; I don’t want to grow old and bitter. Life is finite and there are so many things on my bucket list and if eventually I decide to go streaking in the middle of a football (soccer) game and that will make me happy then I will do it. Otherwise, if I live with pure self-respect, what’s the fun in that? I am not saying that I will degrade myself, but just the term self-respect seems so prudish. Oh no, I do not mean people who have self-respect are uptight, it’s just that that self-respect comes with high morals, and I just cannot live up to some of those morals, so I would rather be happy and live life to the fullest.
For me, happiness doesn’t necessarily mean deviance; it just means that I will do what I want, when I want, how I want, because I want to. There are so many restrictions because of the laws put in place and I feel the self-respect also comes with unspoken laws that you can’t break. Again, I feel like I am speaking against self-respect, but the truth is that no one got anywhere on plain self-respect. You need happiness too. I am not qualifying this journal; because I choose happiness, but if I were to choose self-respect, then I would have to qualify by saying that in order to live a self-respectful life, I would need happiness to balance out things. Okay, granted by having self-respect you get the respect of others as well and you can live a respectable life, but why do I care what others have to think or say about me. I am not here to please other people; I am here to live a happy life.
I honestly can’t see myself choosing the self-respect path over happiness, because so far in my life, I am happy and I have never regretted anything for being happy. By being happy I know I will look back at my life later and be even happier that I chose a better path for me.
Friday, October 15, 2010
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When I wrote my blog on this question, I chose self-respect over happiness. It isn’t that I don’t want to be happy or I think I’m better than anyone else, it just seems to me that eventually there may come a time when you look back on something you did for happiness and realize that while at the time it felt good, you didn’t respect yourself in the process and now you look like a fool. And I don’t mean looking like a fool to anyone else because like you said, that shouldn’t matter. But to yourself, at some point your self conscious may say “Wow, what was the point of that? Just simply happiness in the moment?” Thats where the fine line of happiness and self-respect meet, which I think is what you were trying to get at - be happy without degrading yourself. Which I think a lot of people need to learn the balance of, myself included. Everyone wants to live a happy life, so we do definitely need to stop and smell the roses. That doesn’t mean we should cut the roses off the neighbor’s rose bush and take them home though. We need happiness while also loving ourselves. I think it’s a give and take. You said no one will go anywhere with just self-respect, but no one is going to get anywhere with just happiness either. They kind of go hand in hand.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog, it was great to read from the other side of this!
Hi Cyn! I hope your weekend is going great! Well I really enjoyed your point of view on the happiness vs. self-respect topic. I think our thoughts were similar, you had said that self-respect comes along with being happy. This is an argument I also brought up, to me they sort of go hand in hand. Yet I’m glad you pointed out that we as humans are quite selfish, and when given the chance we will choose what ultimately makes us happy. This may sound harsh, but its this reality that helps us gain self respect. Similar to when you wrote about its unspoken laws. Whether right or wrong, we know deep down whether we made a good decision or not. But mostly I liked how you said you’d rather be happy and live life to the fullest. We need more happy people on this planet, I don’t think we all appreciate things as much as we should. During this time of struggle is when we need to find happiness were we can and disperse it among as many as we can. Enjoying our time here in this world is a precious gift. We aught to be happy with it. Keep doing what you do!
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