A Little Power

“The respect you give others is a dramatic reflection of the respect you give yourselves.” – Robin Sharma

Shouting at junior employees and humiliating, threatening and hurling abuses at them is unacceptable.

Behaving in a superior, stand-offish manner without even offering a chair to the parent who comes to meet the school principal is unacceptable.

Treating visitors contemptuously by officers who have been placed there to redress the grievances of the public is unacceptable.

The rude behaviour of a doctor who behaves discourteously towards his patients is unacceptable.

The ill-mannered behaviour of bank staff who shout at an uneducated customer for not filling out a form properly is unacceptable.

Basically, using fear as a tool to assert superiority is one of the meanest things a person can do to inflict emotional injury on another fellow human being.

Such actions are better known as bullying among children and are severely discouraged, often with strict consequences. But why is it that, as adults, we don’t think twice about bullying others? And why do we sometimes allow ourselves to bow down, cowering in fear, before bullies?

Perhaps it is because we have somehow learnt to associate authority with the right to intimidate.

A designation, a uniform, a position, a larger office, a higher salary or simply the ability to make life difficult for someone else does not make a person superior. Yet, how easily we forget this when we are given a little power.

And how easily we forget, too, what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

Things would have been so much simpler and more peaceful if we learnt to respect one another, regardless of the situation or status. After all, a little courtesy costs us nothing.

The world would certainly be a much better place to live in if we remembered that before anything else, we are all human beings.