Joan_Didion's_on_Self_Respect_Response_Paper

You walk in the doors on your first day of high school. You’ve seen maybe one or two of your friends from last year but that’s it. You look around and notice all of the cliques and wondering where will you fit in' And how' It seems like a lot of people have changed from middle school to high school so the question is; who are you' In the selection “On Self Respect” By Joan Didion she explains her position of self respect and I have written my own view of what self respect is, which agrees with Joan’s definition. I agree with Joan Didion’s definition of self respect, but also, in a way self-respect is hard to define, because it is different for every person. It all depends on your values and what really matters most to you. Keep your values close to you, because they make up who you are, and how you act. If you lose sight of these values, then you have lost your self-respect and have turned into someone else. “Self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others.” You shouldn’t care what other people think about you and let their opinions and thoughts get to you; they aren’t worth it. Don’t make yourself over just to please someone else because they are not you. “Discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do.” Only you can be you and what that is, no one will ever no. It’s something you have to find out on your own. It’s not necessarily easy, or the one thing that’s always one our mind. But nonetheless, it’s there, and we all have to go through finding ourselves at one point in time no matter how long we wait to do it. “We eventually lie down in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whatever we chose to do, what path to follow, we one day face ourselves, take a look in the mirror. Whether we like what we see and are proud of it, or we run away and hide, never becoming what we are meant to become. Our own self-respect is based on our values, but what we chose and make to be our values really depends on the influences around us and how we are raised as kids. I think at one point or another in our lives we all do something solely to fit in. Everybody wants to fit in and be accepted. But we can so easily fall under the wrong influences. Whether we saw it on TV, in a magazine, or all the so-called “cool kids” at school are doing it too, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes we won’t even realize what we’ve just done or said until we look back on it much later. You may realize one day that you’ve changed your clothes and the way you act just so you could fit in. You may one day realize and think to yourself “What am I doing' What makes this so cool' And is it really worth it'” You may wonder one day where did all of your old friends go' But look even farther and you’ll see why they don’t hang out with you anymore. If you make yourself over to fit in with a selected group of people, you’ll lose the perfectly fine ones that you already have, their respect, and most importantly your respect for yourself. “The trusts betrayed, the promises broken, the gift irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness.” Don’t believe every word someone tells you, don’t try and act like what you see in the media, just be you. If people love you for that, then that’s great, it really it is, and if they don’t, then that doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person or that something is wrong with you, it just means that your different. It shows a sign of individuality. Like I’ve said before self respect is based on our values and what’s important to us. One of my values would have to be family, they out up with me everyday no matter what mood I’m in and they don’t judge or make a big deal or make fun o me when I screw up, because let’s face, we all do, nobody is perfect. If your goal in life is to be perfect, then you are either delusional or a robot. Preferably, I’d rather be crazy then boring. But that’s just me. Another one of my values is my faith. I grew up in church and still am. Everyone in my family is strong Christians. It’s the way we were all raised. I think for me anyways, it is a good background to have that because I know that they are non judgmental and very accepting and overall just fun people to be around. Just how they don’t judge me, I don’t judge them or anyone else around me. I try not to categorize or not be friends with them just because they dress a certain way, I don’t like the people that they hang out with, or that other people say that they are, mean or because I just don’t like the way they dot their eyes, something stupid like that. I don’t care what other people say about me or my friends. They can gossip and talk all they want but I won’t listen. I don’t have time for drama in my life I have better things to do then just sit around and make fun of people. I don’t like it when people talk about my friends though I think it only makes them look bad and unsecure about themselves. Half the time they don’t even know what they are talking about. I do have a twin sister though and like most siblings do, we fight. When we get in a big fight she’ll say things about me that she said my friends said and I act like it’s no big deal but later I’ll look back and wonder if she said was really true' Most times I end up just shaking it off though and think she only said that because she was angry. But I think what I need to work on most is bringing my faith with me into my everyday life, and not just leaving it a church. I feel like I’m a different person at church then I am at school, and I need to change that. I’m not really ashamed of my faith itself just worried of what other people might think. Which I shouldn’t be and I can’t be. That’s not the person I want to be. Self-respect is something that we should all have. Whether we chose to have it or not is in our power. Your mom can tell you to brush your teeth before you go to bed, your teacher can remind you to study for a test tomorrow, but nobody is going to come right out and show you how to get self-respect. You have to earn it for yourself. “We play roles doomed to failure before they are begun.” You won’t what you can possibly become until you try. Yeah that does mean you’ll have to mess up a couple of times before you get it right, but that’s what finding yourself really is.