A dear friend of mine suggested respect as a subject for this week’s blog.
It’s taking me a little bit longer than usual to write it, as it seems to have been a week of extreme pain only countered by morphine. Which means I probably slept more of the week than I realise, without feeling any better for it. That’s enough about my week.
When I started at secondary school in 1975, there were two key things I learnt – a brown jacket, brown trousers, a garish yellow shirt and brown, blue and yellow tie doesn’t suit me. They still have the same uniform today!
The more important lesson I learned was the school motto, ‘Revereor Vitam’ meaning ‘Respect for Life’. Throughout my life this has been my motto. I’m not just talking about respect for human life. I’m talking about respect for the lives of everything and everyone on this planet.
I sometimes think we are too quick in the working world to show deference to people who don’t necessarily deserve respect.
It’s not about earning respect, it’s not about respect that comes with status or our job titles. It’s about how we demonstrate our respect for everyone around us. If we cannot respect everyone from the cleaner to the delivery driver, to the administrator, to the professional worker, to the manager and the senior team, how can we expect them to respect us?
Respect is about how we behave and I’ll be honest, whenever anybody has expected me to respect them because of who they are, it has immediately made me completely unable to respect them. This has probably caused me lots of problems in my career but at the same time It’s meant that I’ve kept true to myself and my school motto respect for life. How can we expect others to respect and value us, if we cannot put our ego to one side and respectfully be at peace with everyone?
Jim Thomas
August 2025.
Leave a Reply