Aaaight. Respect to the duckie massive...

So now that we've learned that love requires respect, let's try and mess with respect.

Ok, first things first. I'm angry at the moment, so the quality here's going to drop. Big time. The reason I'm currently upset is that somebody who's helped me make some very big changes in my life, and has been my inspiration for some time now, misunderstood something I said, and is angry at me for it. I've tried explaining what I meant, and seem to be getting nowhere.

This person asked me what I intend to do to win people's respect, hence the interest in the topic.

How do you earn somebody's respect? I guess respect indicates at least a minimal level of trust. You have to trust in what a person says/does/thinks for you to respect them, right? So how can you earn that trust from somebody? We humans look up to people for many different reasons, whether it be beauty, perceived status, or a person's ability to perform a certain task.

Like how you look up to the guy who's worked at your job for the last x years and knows all the ins and outs of the job, including all the sneaky tricks to making your job easier that your boss doesn't want you to know. This man's obviously thought long and hard about his job to come up witht these little tricks, and his performance reflects that fact.

But what about if you want to earn the respect of somebody who already looks down on you? What if you want that man who's been at the job to give you, the newbie, a chance? It can be a tough balance. You've got to take all the crap this guy will almost cetainly give you about doing things wrong, and he almost certainly won't share his secrets of how to do things if he already has disdain for you, but you've also got to assert yourself enough that he won't just push you around forever.

Doing either of these things too much will result in the guy not giving two craps about you, or at worst, outright despising you. Respect can be tough to earn from people if they're not willing to give it you you.

Then there's a different kind of people. The kind who feel that respect isn't earned, but is something everybody has a right to. These are the people who will come up to you and say "If you want to take extra time on your break, just 'forget' to clock back in, the company doesn't keep tabs on that type of break, and you'll still be paid for it!" on your first day.

I try my best to be one of these people, who give everyone every opportunity, but I'll admit that I make mistakes. I give chances to people who don't deserve it. I defend people who clearly don't deserve it, just in case my looking after them will result in a change in their personality. It never does.

It's hard not to get cynical when you get let down by these people. You offer them everything you have, and they just end up making you look bad with them. Sooner or later you just want to give up on everyone - leave them be to find out how to do things better by themselves, and that's when you start losing the respect of the people who did look up to you in the first place.

So now I must try and patch up things with my acquaintance. I've explained and apologised, but heard no word from him since. I hope he gets what i mean in the end.

Until then, I'm sorry, HJF. I really didn't mean it in a bad way, man.

What is love?

So, I got to thinking just recently about exactly what love is. How do we find it? Where does it come from? Nobody's ever been able to answer this before, and I'm now going to see if I can come to any sort of conclusion here.

Oh yeah, early warning here, I'm in a serious mood - this is probably going to be quite boring.

So, love, at it's most base level, is a form of respect. You love somebody because some quality or another that this person has interests you and you look up to them because of it. These can range from things like being a friendly, caring person to having nice teeth. I'm not saying that you can love a person for having nice teeth, but it can be part of what you find appealing about them.

Love is when you have many of these little things, all rolled into one, so the person you fall in love with may be a friendly, caring person with nice teeth. Which brings us back to the respect thing.

Why is respect important? Because without it, people in love would just be friends. The repect we're talking about for love is a deep, meaningful, multi-layered respect, involving caring about the individual's feelings, often more than your own.

This is called 'compromise' and while many relationships consist of only one person compromising, and doing it often, there are lots out there who work together to come to an agreement on these sorts of things. So who's happier?

In a relationship where one person consistently denies themselves their opinion for the sake of their partners, you'll find that they don't mind too much, as seeing their partner happy makes them feel good, and everybody wins in the end. In relationships where both partners compromise, nobody ever actually gets what they want, both people just get a watered-down version of their wishes.

Me, I'm a compromiser. I don't care enough about anything to make a big thing about it. Which is probably something that's not making me look too good right now...