Respect

Never take a person's dignity: It's worth everything to them, and nothing to you. - Frank Barron

I've been saving this word from a long time till the right moment to post it as a blog post. This word is very meaningful to me, at the very least, and it is a very powerful word. Respect, like love, can't be measured. Well, there ain't any S.I units for the measurement of Respect. It can't be like, you have "50cm^3 of Respect". Neither can it be, you have "50 tons of Respect". The only way to measure it is to count how many people respect you, maybe for your intelligence, your quick wits, your leadership capability, or your athletic skills for instance. If you're respected by a certain somebody for a certain something, you're respected by that certain somebody for a certain something. It's that simple. However, there's not many people who is in this world who can respect everybody he/she has encountered in his/her life. The respect I'm talking about now is the general respect that every human being at the very least should have. You may hate him/her, love him/her, being not close to him/her, not understanding him/her and so on... But there should be that essential and minimum amount of respect you should have for him/her. A couple of months ago, Three buddies and I were playing Basketball at the basketball court somewhere near to my house. We know we definitely ain't good players, we're not even close. But there's no reason we should be looked down on, humiliated, and thought to be only "small fries" and nothing else. However, a group of guys perhaps one or two years older than us, did the exact same things I've mentioned above. We were just playing, they asked for a match, between us and them, and the match starts. They just ignore our defense, play and trick around us, making us look like clowns, and just spam 3-pointers. They get the rebounds, pass them back out to the 3-point line and continue shooting. They don't even want the easy 2 points. They just shoot 3-pointers. They are obviously better, and we are obviously thrashed. They are not even playing seriously, humiliating us like that. If that happens to you, how will you feel? Today, a similar event happened. It's me together with another three friends (I also don't get why there's always FOUR of us), we were also playing Basketball, and a group of four wearing school basketball team jerseys, wearing official basketball shoes and basketball equipment, all save one guy, came in and asked for a match, obviously picking on us coz' we looked weak in basketball skills (Don't ask me why, coz 'this kind of stuff always happen), and we accepted just for the fun. They begin with one guy who always shoots 3-pointer (he kinda really suck at it, even his teammates acknowledged that), another guy that we know as a very pro player, two others rather unknown. Only the guy who always 3 pointers spam 3 pointers this time, while the others are rather strong. They also ain't playing seriously, until we are quite close to winning, then one guy says "Play seriously now". The first match we lost by 2 points (A basket coz' one basket in meant 2 points), and we eventually won the second match. I mean seriously, why do all these people play like that, fooling around, making beautiful but difficult lay-ups when they can just keep it simple and win the match easily? This does not just apply to only sports and games, but rather giving chances to your opponent to allow them to have a decent chance to win when you know they are "too weak" for you. Picking on people who are obviously below your level may be already considered as a cowardly approach to some. Not respecting them in the game or event, no matter how lousy they might be in the game, unless he/she shows utterly no sportsmanship at all and is really someone who deserves it, does not make you a winner. It only makes you a winner without any glory. And, a winner without glory might as well be considered a "loser". Respect begets Respect. These people definitely don't deserve respect from me.