Self as a prefix

I've always found the prefix "self" to be interesting and useful. By nature, I'm introspective, so terms like self-effacing, self-worth, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-control, self-image, self-determination, self-assessment, etc. have been helpful in both my personal and professional reflection.

Lately, the term self-respect has come to my attention. I was reading one of my favorite websites, www.brainpickings.org over the weekend. The acticle that first caught my attention was one by William James about "habits." As it usually happens with me, though, I clicked on a link within that article and became enamored of snippets of another article (essay) by Joan Didion about self-respect.

Here are some quotations worthy of note (IMHO):

"To do without self-respect...is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals with one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every 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, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions 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." ~Joan Didion (www.brainpickings.org)


Didion also suggests that the antithesis of self-respect is self-reproach. In this state, reprimand ourselves (and feel inordinate guilt) for the even the slightest real or imagined offenses. She provides the example of something so small as an unanswered letter...we can fill in our own blanks for the offenses. In engaging in such self-reproach, we essentially alienate ourselves from OUR SELVES. She puts it so much more eloquently than I can:
"It is the phenomenon sometimes called ‘alienation from self.’ In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could sayno without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home." ~Joan Didion (www.brainpickings.org)

Maybe you would enjoy www.brainpickings.org  ---it's very thought-provoking and healthy mental exercise. 

PS  The article about "habits" by William James (www.brainpickings.org) is also quite good!