Respect and fear are NOT the same

Respect is something that is always expected...but it shouldn't be...

"Why should it not be just expected, Rox? Isn't that what we were taught as kids...that we have to respect our elders?"

Respect is a very funny thing...and by that I mean that it is peculiar and not hilarious. By that I mean that people who are in their late 30's to early 40's and beyond that age range are a group of people and parents who are teaching our kids to respect but also to be respected. This is not something that people who were raised, at least the majority of us in the generation which I was born, to believe that respect is just a given. It is not a given. In fact, I am a big believer in that if it is meant to just be a given that it should just be given at the time the doctor sees the baby's head - yup...THAT is when respect is a given because it should just BE given to that brand new life. Brand new life is like dangerous animals in the wild. No one would ever, without proper training and without a clue or even a whisper of common sense that we each immediately know upon even first sight of any wild animal that we see in their natural habitat - respect is needed. In the wild where the animals reign supreme and are dearly in charge of the natural order of things, respect is something that cannot be thought about. It must be there. If it is not there, any human who is not more aware of the creature it is confronted with will be hurt, or worse, killed, and worse than that - eaten.

Primal humans, meaning the kind that are brand new to this consciousness, are just as wild as those animals in the wild, and the proper training of that new life comes early on, immediately after it is brought into this lifetime. We would never expect a brand new baby to have what is the majority's thought about respect. It is cute and little and no where near as dangerous as are those animals encountered in the wild, but that new born child could be just like those animals under the right set of wrong circumstances. We all know that children, from the time they are born into this lifetime are just like those wild animals anyway, for no other reason than that we are like them, and they are like us, in more ways than we think we are. This is where today's writing comes into play in that we silly, "civilized" human type people have the ability to reason, and with that energy also comes the ability to still be as primal as we ever were, meaning that we are taught by fear and comfort, and always, one is stronger than the other.

This is where the "right set of wrong circumstances" as far as the human animal is concerned. We are a very dangerous animal. Our ability to reason only makes us more so, because we have the ability to make choices that involve other people. We are met with other people from the moment that we are born, at least in this realm, and in this realm we are given what is called an option. An option is funny, and I teach a whole lot about the difference between a choice and an option. A choice means that one of the choices in front of you is gonna be the only one with a "yes" for an answer, but with an option all of the answers to all of the options in front of you can be "yes" even though not at the moment. This is where a lot of people fail a child, where it is that they want their kids to show respect, but they themselves have no real clue of what respect truly is.

What Respect truly is NOT!

There are a lot of adults who were children who were raised with the energy of fear that the adults in our lives at the time called "Respect." No matter what it was that they used in order to force our respect the way that THEY wanted it, it worked, at least up until now, when a whole lot of us are in the mindset that is trying to repair what went awry with us when it became evident in our reptilian brains that something was not in accordance with the laws of Nature. Somehow, it was confirmed to us that which we already knew for a long time was not right, not okay, and we were, through our souls' suffering and as well, through the generation which followed our own, were tasked with the duty of righting that wrong that was not given to just a few of us, but to us all. We were raised to believe that respect and fearing others is correct, that it is believable that if we are scared to death, that we will not bother to question what it is that we have been told is the truth, and really, it is not the truth.

Fear is NOT respect. To tell us all that we "must fear God" is the biggest, ugliest sin of all, because to a child fear is fear, no matter what. When a child is afraid, he or she knows they are. Of all things to make a child fear, not only Spirit, but the fear that is a child afraid of his or her parents, which is also the fear of disappointing them, of doing things not good enough to please them, which can cause them to tell us that we were not good enough to do something to THEIR specifications ....this is how these people MADE US respect them, and our grandparents as well, because that is where the generation of parents before ours learned how to make us respect, through the use of fear. And it was a fear of things that were not only physical, but also emotional and spiritual as well. To feel like respect and fear are the same thing is very dangerous and causes people to go out into the world and do things and say things that are based in fear rather than in respect.

I hate to sound like I am hating on my 'Aumakua, like I am hating on my Kupuna, but the way that a whole lot of Hawaiian kids are taught as youngsters is the "hit first and ask questions later" type of instilling into kids a forced respect based in fear. This is an act of fear placed on a child by adults who are still listening to the things that the people who, at one time, who, some of them, are not in this awareness that we are anymore, were the adults in the lives of the people who were the adults in our own lives. This is how fear becomes equated with respect, and how this sort of energy is carried down the bloodlines and into the subsequent generations which follow.

What Respect IS 

Respecting other people is how we learn to get along in this lifetime, period. Respect, in its Merriam-Webster's definition is as follows:

"...(2) vb 1 : to consider deserving of high regard: ESTEEM 2: to refrain from interfering with another's privacy 3: to have reference to :CONCERN..." (2006, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus, pg 893) 

Respect is not fearing anything or anyone, but is displaying the qualities that are that of high regard for others, and our not even thinking to pry into another's private and in-the-soul places where no one should be without some sort of permission, and it is being concerned with the well being of others, and, as well, to be able to have even the tiniest bit of empathy in regards to another's life, choices, being-ness, etc.

This current generation of parents, we have the opportunity and the option to teach our own charges what respect really is. Our children are not scared, at least not like we were. They are not afraid to tell us when they hurt because they are not afraid that their parents are going to tell them to choke back the tears because no one wants to be around a cry baby. Our kids are not afraid to be who they truly are....blue hair...tatted out...piercings....LGBT...because our generation knows what it is like to try to fit into a personality and a spirit that is conforming and that is rigid and just not who or what we are, and is also not who they are.

We teach our own children this Kuleana, this responsibility of the Soul that was handed down to us in its rawness, in its violence, in its pain, and with these things we brought to the world this sense of Respect that is the very truth of us....tats, blue hair, piercings and all, and really, it is a beautiful thing, because it is the truth.

There is never anything essentially wrong with the truth. Respect is Truth. Period.

Respect is not violence handed down with a heaviness of the hand and the weightiness of hurtful words that sting the soul, harm the pride within, crushes the Spirit that is essential to who we are on the inside. Respect is not names called in haste, is not the parental authority that was there and present in our own lives, when we were children, when it was our own Kuleana, unbeknownst to us all, that the lessons we were given that were the evidence that Respect was not meant to harm us was not the actuality of this thing that is vital to healing, is vital to the growth of the Soul within. It takes so very little to do small things, but in their anger, in their misrepresentation of the truth that they were forced to accept by their own Kupuna, they gave us that which they knew not was anything but respect.

To violate a person's sense of self using things that they believe is the truth is wrong. To violate anyone as a means to manipulate and cause harm, even unwittingly, is wrong. To teach fear as respect is dangerous, gives someone a reason to feel as though they somehow are wrong for who and what they are. Our lives were not meant to be lived under the control of other people, namely not those whose lives were lived in fear of disappointing people who were likely and also afraid. It is our place in this Universe to give respect, so that those in our charge will learn it and not fear others.

It is dangerous to the all of humanity to teach fear, because fear makes us act out irrationally, and that is the thing that a lot of people who teach with the crack of the whip rather than the truth as it really is do not understand they are doing. When we teach others who we are, we teach them through reaching them in ways that are not felt physically, but from and with the Spirit and those lessons reach all the way down to the Bones of the Soul.

Teach Respect, and TO respect, rather than to force respect through fear and manipulation.

We must take up our Kuleana, both singularly as well as collectively, and remind ourselves daily about the things that we were taught, that were forced onto us, and whose rules were those set by people, at that time, who were no longer in physical existence. We must stop leaning on the understanding of those who have passed away in terms of fear as respect, and we must force ourselves to step outside of the comfort zone of conformity because if we do not, we will create another generation of people who hurt others, who willingly abuse those they say they love, and all for what?

Respect that is not truly respect, but is fear instead dressed up as what we have been told to believe is Respect.

Respect should be a given, not because it is expected, but because all humans should expect to be respected, period.

If we behave like people tell us to, and what they say is based in fear rather than in Love, we will essentially be as those who brought to us the lessons that were not respect, and were anything but Love.


I Love You All
ROX

@ReverendRoxie22

Your Life Was Not Always This Way...(A Soares Ohana Tribute)

...and as with all else, this too shall change and you will no longer hurt from it...

You have to start somewhere. Today I did just that. Today I went to a domestic violence support organization because the frank truth is that this entire ordeal has rendered me "stuck," sort of, in a place where I am damned if I do, and damned if I don't, and whether I do it now or do it a month from now, it is still going to get done because of this, that and of course, the other...however...

Life was not always this way...


...and Life will not remain this way. No matter how hard it seems for you at this moment to really believe that there is an end to all of this madness that you are currently witnessing as being the thing that is your life, know, believe, and accept, too, that none of it is permanent, that it WILL get better as you get stronger, and as you get stronger, you will find that you can do just about anything you put your mind AND your soul to, and that, really, is the ONLY thing that any one of us HAS TO try to do - accept what  I just wrote up there as a basic Truth which applies to each and every one of us who graces the crust of this planet.

Not one thing that you can look at within your eyes' line of sight will remain just exactly as it is at this moment. Some peoples' lives will change markedly, and other's lives will just be implemented with those things and those people -some who may already be there and in place and waiting...waiting, waiting, waiting...not for the change to happen to or for them, but by them...and very much indeed we find that these changes, they are permanent.

But change and its ever presence is the only thing that does NOT change ... changes, paradoxically, never changes. Change is the thing that makes us fear, and change is the thing that makes us grow, and we humans do not like to change and we do not like to grow. We become comfortable in settling for less than what we see ourselves as, and let me tell you something, folks - if there is one thing that I have learned absolutely in these last two decades, it is that we would rather settle for what we have been told we are able to have and deserve to have, and we allow someone else to tell us what THEY think we are worthy of, and it is not much, guys, not at all. ...

Which is the reason that I contemplated doing what I did today, knowing that I had to do it, that I am the one who is totally responsible for my own healing, that I was not going to the place where I went to today for any other person than myself, because I can no longer deal with the sadness that I have been given and I can no longer carry my burden and someone else's at the same time and that I should never have volunteered to do it for as long as I have.

I learned something about me today, and it is that I really am a soul warrior, that I really am all that I have known that I am, for the entirety of my life and NOT only the last 23 - I was someone prior to the day that I met the person who I married, and here I am, many  years later, almost to the date, 21 years later, and I see in this person the thing that I have always seen, and what I have always seen has been something of a shell of what someone was and that person hanging on to that memory when he'd held all the marbles, had all the control, and little did I realize that I am still afraid, so very, very afraid, that I am still a little rough around the edges, and if you saw me the way that I see me, the rough edges are not unacceptable. I worked hard for them...we all work hard for them...

I have enough rough edges, all on the inside, and it was not until tonight that I began to orate to my oldest about the reason that I have not gone completely off of the deep end, not at all, and why it is that every time hear Hawaiian music, I am brought to tears, but I am smiling, and it is because there is a group of people with whom I share an emotional bond who know me as well as any group would. I love them. They Love me. They are my cousins...my Soares cousins...the ones who are more like my siblings than anything else.

There are only so many times in our lives when we are afforded the opportunity to tell people who mean a whole lot to us that indeed we Love them...that truly, I do Love you, each and every one of you, with every bit of aloha that I can think to even contain within me. Normally, at a time of night when I am sitting in my Sacred Space in prayer with God and asking for the things that my soul so desires, I thought about the many things that I have been privileged to have said that I have owned, places I have visited, people I have met, places I have lived... all of it, I am instead sitting here at my keyboard and listening to Keali'i Reichel, thinking about all those times we were together, even recently, and always at Uncle Reggie's house. Always eating and drinking and sneaking out to have a smoke...and most of all, just being right there, in another space which is considered to me to be Sacred. It is a place where I know we are all of one heart and soul, that we are a family, that we are looking at each other and in that split second we are seeing that missing front tooth, long braided hair, slippahs from Longs Drugstore, the Silver Shave Ice Truck...

And yes...of course we broke each others' hearts, and said things that hurt each other, and even sometimes allowed ourselves to throw blows, all over what?

No, not pride, or greed, or anything stupid and 'adult,' like that...nah, we fought because for a split second we feared that we'd lost the love of a person who was our...sibling...you guys, all of you, are my brothers and sisters, and I am so glad to tell you that for as long as I can remember and think about growing up "Hawaiian," I can see us all...all there at the most important times of each of our lives, and though I may have missed out one some pretty significant times and events, I sit here thinking about it, and knowing that I have the chance every single day of my life to tell someone how much they mean to me. I have done that for years - told the people who mean the most to me that I love them...and I say it to them often, and they know who they are, because when I see them, I tell them. I tell them that I love them, and I mean it, I really, really mean it.

For every time that we fought and said ugly words to one another, know that each time I thought of you afterwards, it was never about the fight that just happened but about the time that we fought when we were kids and then I laughed and suddenly missed you.

For every tear that we shared when one of our hearts got broken, know that when you cried, I cried with you, maybe not where you could see it, but I hurt for you, and I grieved for you, but I always knew you would be okay because that is the way that we were raised.

For every laughter filled room of kids we call our own, and seeing them play together just like we did, in them I see shades of us, and I am taken right back to Booth Park, to Ala Moana Park, to The Bus, The Waikiki Zoo, Makapu'u Beach, Erleene's truck, and finding an EPT test in my mom's carry-on.

I am sure that you can all see all these things in your minds now, right now, and I know that just as I am recalling these good times and these good memories, I am glad to say that I know you, that I have always Loved you, and that forever we will be bound, not by the memories of who we were or where we are going or doing with our lives, but because we are the truest Ohana there is, and I am happy tho know that this is who we will always be. I miss you all, and when I see you I see the real You, the One Who has always honored and Loved the Real Me...all of you...

Thank you all for always being right there for me, right at the right time, and never forgetting to let me know that I am Loved !!

Aloha...

...Mapuana...