Life Lessons We Should All Already Know

Remember these life lessons:

~Only certain people are capable, knowledgeable, wise, and deserve respect.
~We learn how to recognize them by sight, sound, and feeling when we are very young, through the example of those around us.
~Anyone who does not seem like one of those people is not worthy of automatic respect. They have to prove it to us by the standards we set.
~Some people can't ever prove that they deserve real respect, because they just can't, they're just not good enough, period.
~People who we know don't deserve automatic respect also don't deserve civil behavior or polite manners. We don't have to listen to anything they say, and it's okay to feel superior to them. We don't need to treat them with good manners or courtesy, whether they're a stranger, a friend, a family member, or a coworker.
~If we're not sure if someone deserves respect or not, and we're not sure if we like them or not, we should find out what their job is, their college degrees are, and listen to what other people say about them. If they don't have an important title or degree, or if someone tells us bad things about them, then it's okay to treat them with disrespect, especially if everyone else does.
~Integrity, civility, politeness, honesty, respect, and good manners are only for people who we think deserve it, and who our friends tell us deserve it.
~Only people who are jealous of us don't like us.
~Only people we like deserve our sympathy, and only people we agree with deserve our respect.
~We can tell everything about what a person is like by the way they look and the way they make us feel.
~The only people who are wise are already famous or have important jobs.
~Almost all people with important jobs and degrees earned them completely on their own with no real help from anyone else, and anyone who does not have an important job or degree is just lazy, crazy, or not as intelligent.
~The way we feel about someone else always represents the way that person really is.
~All people we respect and like are trustworthy, honest, and righteous.
~Rumors and stereotypes are based in fact and reality, unless they're about ourselves or someone we like.
 

~Learn how to detect b.s. and manipulation from farther away, and learn how to see the bigger picture from farther away as well. Learn the difference between "the forest" and "the trees", and what a "bird's eye view" really looks like, from higher up.

~Learn what sarcasm and irony looks and sounds like. 

~Don't be so hard on yourself or on others or take yourself or another so seriously; there are no humans who are more powerful than most of the other creatures on this Earth. Without a weapon, some kind of shield and shelter, and without any clothing, even the largest human is not much more powerful than a baby lamb against most other creatures, and no human can survive without the same basics that any other human must have. There has never been a human who did not need to be cared for by another, for quite some time, in order to survive. There has never been a human who survived infancy who was not influenced by other humans.

~When we take ourselves more seriously than we take others, we're in ego, not reality. When we make lords and gods out of other humans, and try to make still other humans into peasants and morons, we're still in ego. If we're in ego, we're not in reality.
~M.M.Black
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