When I was a little kid, my parents always told me, “Respect your elders”, as the years passed it became, “Respect your teachers” followed by “Respect your friends” followed by “Respect your peers” etc. My simple question,”why?” Why should I respect people I am told to instead of only the people I want to? This led to further research on my part as to “Is there actually anyone who I genuinely respect?” If there are, then “why them? Why not others?

The world today is a marketplace of leaders. Economic, social, religious, cultural, political, self proclaimed, you name it and you will find people queuing up to be the next big thing. One thing synonymous to all leaders is that “Leaders must be respected”. However, considering that people like Lalu Prasad Yadav, Suresh Kalmadi, Shibu Soren are also supposedly leaders, respect is sometimes hard to come by. Still, people do respect them. Difference is, it is more often fear and compulsion rather than respect.

However, there are people in this world who have a kind of personality that commands respect. Nobody ever taught me to respect my mother; it comes from within me, its 100% genuine. That’s commanding respect. Her personality is such that I don’t have to think twice before respecting her. Similarly there are such people in the world known by many, who command a similar kind of respect. In the blog titled “Respected by choice” I have tried to portray certain personalities who I willingly respect. At no juncture have I equated their level of success to the respect that they have earned for themselves because I think success is no yardstick to measure the respect a person commands. In the process, I have also tried to pay tribute to them. Surely I am not the first and will not be the last to do so.