The lack of self-respect

It takes all kinds of people to make a society work and thrive. For every entrepreneur and successful business leader we have, there is an unskilled worker doing the jobs many of us wouldn't do to make the world work. Every society is a patchwork of educated, skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers and without those people who work the menial jobs with low pay and few benefits, life would be much harder for those at every other level.

I admire the working men and women of this country. Those people who get up every morning and go to a job they maybe don't like that much but they go just the same and, while they're there, they put in an honest days work. They don't get the headlines and they don't get their pictures in the paper but they do essential work that keeps this country running.

But there's one group of people I suppose I'll never understand and that's those clingy, needy people that conveniently look the other way while they're being abused and disrespected. Those people who have little and are convinced that as little as they have, they have more than they deserve. Everyone reading this column probably knows someone like that: Just act like you like me or act like you love me or stay with me and I'll let you do or say anything you want.

If your boss indicates in some way that you're not valued by him or her, most people would start looking for a new job. But the needy person will jump through whatever hoops the boss puts up, hoping that they can somehow make the boss reconsider how they feel about them and maybe, just maybe, even make the boss like them. But it hardly ever happens and when it doesn't, they stay on because they're just happy to have a job.

We see two-faced elected officials who kow-tow to special interest groups in the back room while they publicly attempt to convince the electorate they're working for ALL the people.

We see people who think other people are their friends, even though those so-called friends talk about them in disparaging ways not only behind their backs but to their faces as well and they just laugh it off because, to them, a fair-weather friend is better than no friend at all.

But the most pitiful people are those who are in marriages where their spouses obviously don't care about them. They flirt, they have affairs, they conjure up disparaging names to call them and they indicate by their words and their behaviors that they don't care for the person they're married to and yet that person buries their head in the sand and pretends that nothing is wrong. As long as the spouse is there to take care of their basic needs, they're willing to put up with all the bad things that are going on.

The real mystery here is that in all four of these situations; work, politics, friendships and relationships, the person who is being taken advantage of has no status or respect from the people taking advantage of them and they typically have no respect for themselves either.

How can a boss respect an employee who works in a hostile work environment without a word of objection?

How can a voter respect a politician who serves the monied special interest groups rather than the people who elected him?

How can a person who constantly receives the put-downs and disrespect of a so-called friend continue to be a friend?

And how can a spouse whose partner shows them no respect at all and doesn't care what they see or hear remain in a marriage that supposedly is anchored in mutual love, trust, and admiration for each other?

Unfortunately, there're more than enough people in all the above categories to make us all less than what we ought to be.