Wednesday, Dec 28, 2011
Letter #4

As days set in motion and end, somewhere in between, I find a better way to express myself as a writer and as a human being.

Curtly, I lived in a zone where I felt that I wouldn’t be able to express myself the way I needed to; it felt awful.

Subsequently, as artists we grow impatient, desperate and become reluctant to succeed. We shut down and resign ourselves to failure in a haste and sometimes, we are unperceptive of our transformations. We have a tendency to raze our buildings before taking the possession of the keys from our landlords. We have to stop eliminating ourselves before our prime. I have a solution.

Today, I came up with a motto: Respect is not for sale!

If my memory serves me true, as a culture, we are taught whom to respect first i.e. “respect your elders”, “respect your deity”, “respect your Earth” and “respect your renowned”. Occasionally, we harmoniously spell the word when Aretha Franklin's classic record plays on current technology, but we have yet to master respecting the one who's doing all of the respecting.

If this weren’t the case, we wouldn’t need self-help books, television programs or websites dedicated to “loving you first”. Surprisingly, the “loving you first” idea is not mandated into school curriculum during the core decade of our gratis and considerable education.

Respect yourself.

Why? Respect yourself because your body needs love to function properly. You are your body. You are your mind. You are your spirit. Without full influence of these parts of you, it will be easy to for anyone to contribute to your discouragement and possibly cause you to give up again. All of the mentioned make you who you are.

Respecting your body can be as little as admiring the creases in your skin, taking care of the obvious members through physical and mental activities and lastly, the uncomfortable stuff like your anus, your vagina, your penis and your inner thighs. Your bodies, minds and souls are the cognitive gifts and machines that will help you become that fabulous entertainer, writer or parent that you want to be. Just take care of yourself through the new high levels of love and respect that you will achieve.

If it translates to many as a newfound conceit, let it be so.

Learn the balances of selflessness and self-care; it will never rub off as egoistic to a person who has self-respect, too. You have to be fine with yourself to create your healthiest work; you have to learn to decline if it means it will get in the way of achieving new goals. You have to be your sentinel.

In this New Year, I ask that you respect yourself more than you did this year and do not ask anyone to respect you. If they need to be told, they are not worth your respect. Aretha is beautiful, but she sent the wrong message.

See you in 2012.

Contribute
Competitions
Gift for a friend
Advertise