Trust, Respect . . . And Beauty
Both trust and respect should always be earned rather than treated as some form of a door prize to be handed out to anyone who shows up or just happens to be in any kind of position of authority (e.g. parents/elders, teachers, the police/military personnel, any part of the government, the media, et al). And just as actions speak louder than words, albeit not as often, a person's actions are the best and surest method of determining whether or not they deserve your trust or respect, if ever. Neither trust nor respect should ever be treated as absolutes unless they have earned either of those; and if anyone should ever abuse you personally or their position of power in general, then that trust and/or respect should be revoked.
In reality, the word "respect" gets thrown around far too readily and nearly everyone seems to demand it these days. We're told that everyone deserves respect at all times. The fact is that people erroneously use the term "respect" when they should be using the phrase "common courtesy." In his article "Command, Don't Demand Respect: Giving Respect Without Feeling It Inside Is Pretentious. Insisting On Such Respect Is False Pride," Manoj Khatri said: "All around us, we see people demanding/giving respect for all the wrong reasons. In your family, respect your elders whether or not they deserve it. At school/college, respect your teachers, doesn't matter if they can't teach anything. At work, respect your seniors, regardless of how competent they are."
As stated earlier, respect, like trust, needs to be earned rather than simply given or expected. While it has been said that respect is neither imposed nor begged, it's earned and offered, it has also been rightly observed that if you have to demand respect then you don't deserve it. Even though at the end of the day you will never get to determine or decide how or when, if ever, anyone respects or trusts you, it is you who should be the one to decide who you respect and/or trust and by what individual criteria you use to determine who, when, and how anyone earns either from you. And we should all be working to earn that trust or respect if we desire it from others.
Bear in mind also that trust and respect are not mutually inclusive. While you can trust that a peer may do their duties to the best of their ability, it doesn't automatically mean that you do or should respect them as their other actions towards you or others might not warrant it. Conversely, while you obviously won't trust an enemy, you might still respect them for their cunning, skill, or some other attribute that you find worthy of respect.
How does the concept of beauty fit into all of this? We're essentially told by the media who we should find beautiful or that somehow beauty is a valid method for automatic judgment of a person. The reality is that beauty is simply a combination of qualities (e.g. shape, colour, or form) that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially sight. Sadly, the media (which in terms of determining "beauty" seems to be the accepted "authority" on the subject, an authority it doesn't deserve in reality as beauty is a subjective matter of opinion and we should be capable of making up our own minds based on our own individual aesthetic) continually focuses myopically on women's appearance while focusing on nearly every other attribute of men. While the apparent majority of media will do this, it doesn't mean that everyone does.
Since a person's physical appearance is the first thing we see when we look at a person and quite often it's the only part of a person we will ever be able to "interact" with on any level, particularly in terms of celebrities, we'll often say (even if only in our own minds) or post online "so-and-so is beautiful/sexy/pretty/hot/etc." when we see someone whose features or attributes fit within our personal aesthetic; and that action may seem shallow to others observing. Of course, some people are simply that shallow. Mind you, those statements aren't limited solely to stated observations by males.
But that physical appearance neither determines nor denotes either intelligence or personality. How can anyone ascertain another person's intelligence unless we're able to interact, most often talk, with them? At that we usually base our conclusions about a person's intelligence far more on the way that person speaks rather than on how they look. As for personality, once we encounter it, it will for many of us adjust how we see that person, either augmenting or diminishing their "beauty" in our eyes.
Whereas we have to earn the respect and trust of others, we cannot earn beauty. That said, like trust and respect, no one else can decide or determine for us who or what we find beautiful. And though we have the absolute right to think of ourselves as beautiful in whatever form or capacity, and we should never let others determine how we perceive ourselves, we simply can't force or expect others to agree with our sense of aesthetic. Beauty is an opinion, but it is our own opinion.
by Rev. J.T. Smith
