The Importance of Self-Respect: This I Believe Humans have many rights, and one of the most recognized are the rights to perform duties that bring about personal development and growth, rights to participate in cultural pursuits, or the simple right in engaging with leisurely and restful activities (The United Nations). While these straightforward ideas are available to the general public, many members of the population are unaware of trampling on some basic rights by belittling, not others but their selves. These self-deprecating people violate their own rights to be treated with dignity and respect, causing them to get the same treatment from others. These individuals are prone to maltreatment or swindling, eventually turning their psyche and body imbalanced. Thus, I believe that in order for these self-loathing and self-pitying people to get back on their feet and regain what they have lost, it is vital that they first must regain their self-respect, so they could have a better outlook for the rest of their lives.
One of the most common examples of people that seem to sacrifice too much of their selves for the sake of others are the shy and servile employees that are always put behind others due to lack of assertion skills. These persons let just about anyone tell what to do, what to wear, what to eat, how to work, and so on, along with getting unfair and inhumane treatment from others without complaints. In using colloquial terms, these are people without backbones. They are deemed to have lost a great deal of self-respect because of letting others freely violate their human rights, for the sake of gaining a false sense of acceptance. At the same time, they also violating their own rights because they letting others do as such, and their low self-worth do not help these people get out of the situation. As long as they do not see that they are worthy of being treated fair and equally with peers, they would remain as such, further allowing self-deprecation to prevail, and removing their rightful place in the community (Hill 6). If these people wants to affirm their rights, it would take a longer recovery time because aside from making others see their worth, these people must also adjust their belief systems regarding fulfilling their needs above others. Doing such would gain their self-dignity and self-worth back, turning these people into persons with better attitudes towards life, and make their selves feel better in the process.
Before self-pitying people could expect to get better treatment in society, they must also learn how to treat themselves with dignity and respect, for this is a basic human right. By changing their beliefs of putting others ahead to putting theirs before others, these people not only give themselves the basic human right of dignity, but also it helps remove their frustrations in society in general. This allows them to bounce back and live their lives to the fullest, which I believe is a basic right that every individual deserves to have.
Works Cited
Hill, Thomas E. Jr. Autonomy and Self-Respect. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Print.
The United Nations. ” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” 10 December 1948. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Web Site. Web. 14 November 2012.
