Respect Comes First

{Top: Bella and I, Mid: Tam and I, Bottom: Angelo and I -- these are three people I respect and love :)}

The basis of any true friendship is respect.

(because lasting love demands respect.  Unusual, strong, passionate, deep love requires no respect – that theory sounds well written but does not work in real life, because if we love someone there is something in him that arouses that love and that “something” quality we have respect for.  Therefore respect comes first and is the foundation and cause of our love. – L.M.)

 

The parenthetical portion above were thoughts of Lucille’s. She wrote this selection sometime in 1930 – almost eighty years ago! Talk about timeless wisdom.

But don’t we all find ourselves in friendships bereft of respect?  I don’t know about everyone else, but I have had times when I wondered if I had any true friends at all. I have felt disrespected by others that I’ve invested so much of myself into, and in the discomfiting alone-ness, I felt my own self-respect ebbing into the darkness that engulfed my once sunny friendships. The more I questioned my own value in the eyes of these former friends (and boyfriends a long time ago) the more my value of self slipped away. I began to see myself as I thought they saw me and I entered the downward cycle of self-blame and self-pity. 

Perhaps the cornerstone of the foundation of respect that Lucille refers to is the true and straight and honest valuation of self, for how can we respect others when the perspective we turn inward is askew? When I place my personal value on performance, acceptance, likeability, accomplishment, the admiration of others, it’s like using a lumpy chunk of sandstone as the cornerstone of a building. It’s a disaster just waiting to fall apart. Here’s a little story to illustrate:

I recently visited my friend in Long Beach, California. We drove around all the historic neighborhoods admiring the interesting and beautiful homes built a century ago in one of California’s up-and-coming, prosperous beach cities. One circa-1920 mansion, not far from her art-deco apartment building rested in decline on a valuable piece of land just a few minutes walk from the beach.

“That house needs some TLC,” I remarked.

“They can’t do anything with it,” she informed me, “They just have to live in it that way.  I found out that the house was moved to this location but it was placed on a faulty foundation. Why it hasn’t been condemned, no one knows, but the foundation is falling apart under the house. It would cost a fortune to raise up the house and build a new foundation underneath it, so no one has.”

A beautiful location and a lovely house set on a crumbling foundation. No one cares for the gardens or paints the stucco exterior of the house and it shamefully stands out notoriously on a block lined with well-tended, historical homes.  In disrepair and neglect it waits for the inevitable.

A lasting edifice, like a European castle, demands a foundation that will stand up to the weight of years and pressure. A lasting love demands respect. An honest valuation of oneself and a clear respect for the other based upon truth, not simply performance or passion or even strong bonds of affection (like family, marriage, years of friendship) lay out the foundation that a long lasting love relationship demands.

Can respect, rather than feelings, cause our love to both become and to grow? I think of Jesus as described in Philippians chapter two. He knew who he really was, he had a clear, honest understanding of his value, yet he chose to respect that which he created (us!) to become like us, walk and work and love and hurt among us. And he did this all for and because of us. Understanding fully the value of his creation enabled Jesus to treat us with respect. The interesting thing about Jesus is that he never treated people with contempt or disdain or disrespect. His healing, his good news, his touch, his love was available to anyone and everyone. He never wrote anyone off as a lost cause. Performance and accomplishment mattered less to him than purity of heart and charity toward others.

How did Christ demonstrate respect?

He touched the untouchable.

Embraced the un-embraceable.

Spoke to those others would ignore.

Blessed the unimportant.

He was willing to like, and to love, everyone.

He taught in ways people could understand.

He shared the secrets of heaven with nobodies.

Jesus’ love came from the unplumbed depths of his knowledge of our value to God. 

You are valuable. I am priceless.  Everyone is precious.  If we base our friendships on that, wouldn’t things look different?

 

Or, do we rather dumbly wait for the inevitable demise because we won’t pay the cost to lay a new foundation? The cost of going back to do the work correctly is great: everyone will find out; it’s risky; it could reveal a myriad of issues we’d have to deal with; it might not work…. The doubts press us away from doing things the better way.

But it will work out. 

That “something” quality Lucille wrote about that arouses respect and love will impel us--once we begin to be willing--to complete the course of action that respect demands. And the reward? We’re rewarded with love and a strong foundation for our relationships.

We sometimes lie to ourselves and gloss over the obvious problems, just like the people who live in the house with a crumbling foundation. Subtle deviations from the truth all contribute to a foundation based on something riddled with fault-lines. Respect and love work in tandem, as fingers and thumb on a hand. To really grasp hold of something, we need all the parts of the hand actively working together.

“When respect comes first, it is the foundation and cause of our love.”

Well said, Lucille.