To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, … counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves. – Joan Didion (1961), via Word on the Street (2010)
Unlike Dalrymple, Joan Didion figured that self-respect is built on self-knowledge rather than the reflected assessment of others. She saw character, which is built upon self respect, as the ability to use that knowledge to be aware of and face consequences of your actions.
The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others – who are, after all, deceived easily enough; – Joan Didion (1961), via Word on the Street (2010)
What Dalrymple and Didion agree upon is that a sense of entitlement is diametrically opposed to self-respect:
I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely have been more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), but I was unnerved by it; I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others. Although even the humorless nineteen-year-old that I was must have recognized that the situation lacked real tragic stature, the day that I did to make Phi Beta kappa nonetheless marked the end of something, and innocence may well be the word for it. I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proved competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the nonplussed apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand. – Joan Didion (1961), via Word on the Street (2010)
Didion’s ideas are wonderfully expressed in her essay ‘On self-respect’ that has been reproduced by Mallary Tenore on her blog Word on the Street (found via The Daily Dish). It’s a long essay, written in 1961 so some of the references may be dated (though time and the Twilight Series have given some of the references potency again, at least for the middle school crowd). I don’t think I can recommend the whole essay for my students, but reflecting some excerpts might be a useful Personal World exercise.
People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. – Joan Didion (1961), via Word on the Street (2010)