Respect

I just saw a very interesting post on Facebook. Paraphrasing. “Everybody says that respect has to be earned. That’s not true. Disrespect has to be earned. Respect should be the default position.”
And that’s kind of true. As you go through life, as you walk down the street, it just makes life more reasonable if you respect everybody. You may not give to the beggar sitting and blocking the doorway, but you should respect them. You may totally despise your boss, but you don’t walk into their office and pee on their potted plants. Respect. It’s what society is built on.
There are lots of other phrases like that, which people repeat and post on the internet but when you think about them they’re not exactly true. They say ‘the early bird gets the worm’ but it is ‘the second mouse that gets the cheese.’ ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ almost directly contradicts ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ They say ‘You can’t please everyone’ but really, shouldn’t we be trying? Also, some people come very close. Who doesn’t like Audrey Hepburn? Who doesn’t like Betty White? Who doesn’t like Kermit the Frog? They say ‘honesty is the best policy’ but Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are in jail, so it wasn’t really the best policy for them. People thought there was a possibility that Jeffrey Epstein might turn honest, in return for a shorter sentence, and look what happened to him. (like most people, I just don’t believe the suicide story)
There are lots of little sayings like that. I guess we need them, because thinking of all the exceptions and all the different angles would make our brains hurt and not necessarily be productive. But, you can always turn something around, or just on it’s side a little bit, and you’ll see something different. Well, maybe not always.