On self-respect | #127
Hi, this is Celeste. I have been writing poems since 2017 and my low-fantasy crime novel Project Dylan since 2022.
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I am not familiar with Joan Didion’s work but she is a legend regardless. As I stumbled upon her essay on self-respect, it is a powerful piece to reflect on as we would inevitably hurt people or break promises. Can we face that side of ourselves?
The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others—who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation—which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O'Hara, is something that people with courage can do without.
To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable home movie that documents one's failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for each screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there's the hurt on X's face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
People with self-respect display a quality of] character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.
They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts.
To feel that we are worthy, one has to have self-respect for better or worse. But it is our choice to respect ourselves and others and to have thriving relationships, instead of being confronted by conflicts and despair with others.
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TrackBear progress
When you have not been meeting your target for one day, two days and so on, you start to have that feeling of what’s the point. I have been feeling like that for a few days.
But this time is different because of TrackBear. I realized that seeing that other person surpassing the par is another way to get me back into having my own progress, however small that is.
With my typical upbringing with Asian parents, it deserves a round of applause that I have learned to stop beating myself up for not hitting my own target. It is eye-opening for me to observe how different it feels getting back to work, when I accept the ebb and flow of life versus beating myself up. I feel more uplifting when I just accept the flow and get back to work.
If you want the accountability on your writing projects for Q1, join us on TrackBear. If you need guidance for how to join, you can see a guide here.
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See you in 2 weeks,
Celeste