Ego and respect

    Hello friends, so here I am after a long time with another abstract thought. To be completely honest my life has changed by a considerable factor in the last few months. I stood up for my needs and that too against my loved ones or also some seniors and demanded that I be treated and heard in a different way. I have come to realize communication, is one of the most important skills that one needs. Communication doesn't mean that you speak fearlessly or tactfully. Communication actually is actually a summary of your entire being!!!! Communication starts in the mind. effective communication is in my view a summarized verb for a conglomerate of verbs. It starts with thinking, then combined with the knowledge of your own needs, forming words....next step is clearly speaking those words. This was all the intrinsic part of effective communication. Now the extrinsic part, where the receiver of the said words listens to them and understands them in the way it was intended. And finally the receiver registers these words as your needs. And then the roles are reversed. So effective communication is no less than a business transaction. 

    That being said, I would come back to my title topic of ego and respect. Apologies for my ADHD brains which drift away onto from one topic to another very fast. I am not a psychologist and this is Not a self help blog, I am actively seeking therapy and trying to be a better communicator myself. My recent most abstract thought was triggered by a personal event. Not going into details of what happened, I came to understand the word Respect or the act of showing respect to someone means putting in effort which are more than basic responsibility. Every social role comes with a responsibility. Yes, in order to know how to show respect, one must know what my basic responsibilities towards this role/person/section of the society are. Then comes the next step of putting in more efforts that go beyond the basic responsibilities. At the same time, the party showing respect and the party receiving respect, must be on the same page, of what the basic responsibilities are!! A bit too complicated?? I could try with an example : so when my father used to come back from work, I used to take his laptop bag from the door so that he can sit calmly, take off his shoes and he has as much as possible a welcoming face at home. Lets say because of culture this action falls as basic responsibility in my family dynamics and me and my dad are on same page about it. An example of showing respect would be any effort beyond this, maybe bring him a glass of water. (Showing respect = basic responsibilities + voluntary extra effort). It must be in my view kept in mind that absence of the extra effort doesn't mean disrespect. In my view Disrespect on the contrary means when basic responsibilities are discounted. Expectations of the "voluntary extra effort" in my view fall into the self entitlement category.

    I saw a small video by Dhruv Rathee where he spoke of a politician, and which sort of cleared my mind a bit on what ego means. We come across such heavy philosophical words daily but hardly know what they look like on action level and how to identify them. Ego being one such word. Even the dictionaries which are supposed to define words in understandable manner, sometimes fail here. So in my perception Ego means, exertion of control on the surroundings and actions, thoughts and words of the society so that an inner insecurity stays protected or hidden. I am still wondering how this separates itself from being a control freak. Maybe it doesn't. I am not very clear on that yet. No matter where I put in this definition of Ego into my personal experience of coming across egoistic people, it fits really well. For an egoistic person, the failure to exert this control is a big source of stress. And I just want to feel compassion towards such people, because god knows what insecurity they are trying to protect!!

Javed akhtar in one of the podcasts brilliantly explains the difference between self respect and arrogance. A self respecting person saves the ego for the powerful people and an arrogant person displays his ego to the weaker. Its deceit to show intolerance to the weak. Arrogant  man is intolerant if the weak and submissive towards the powerfully . Its a litmus test

    It feels really good to jot down my thoughts like this. The head really feels lighter and thoughts more streamlined. So, I wish you a good time till my brains get overwhelmed by next ideas ;P. See ya!!