A Life-Changing Experience About Respect and Being Respectful

In this short essay about respect I will share my life-changing experience that shown me the importance of respect between people. It was during the ceremony which I had at the school. As I hurried across the quad from my dorm room, the excitement of the upcoming closing ceremony of summer camp began building. My heart raced as my mind went back over the last six weeks spent here at this prestigious prep school in the northeastern United States. The ceremony was where we would all see each other one last time before saying our tearful goodbyes.

At the closing ceremony, all students were supposed to march into the hall, with the national flags of their home countries set out on a stage in the front of the hall. I was looking forward to sitting with my friends from all over the world and showing them my home country. However, my excitement cooled as I walked into the hall. Glancing around the big room decorated with so many colorful national flags, I could not see my own country - China’s national flag. Shock and anger immediately seized my heart. I thought it was the disrespectful to my home country and to my fellow Chinese students. But rather than just accept what was happening before my disbelieving eyes, I contacted my advisor as soon as I went back to the dorm to begin to try to rectify this injustice. Unfortunately, she told me that she also had no idea why China’s national flag wasn’t at the ceremony.

Without discussing with anyone, I felt that I had the responsibility to speak up against my national flag’s absence from the closing ceremony. I decided to send an email to ask the manager of the summer school telling her that I loved my home country and I am wondering why the Chinese flag wasn’t at the closing ceremony. I got no reply from her in the following several hours, so I was upset about whether I would be heard.

After sending the email, the closing ceremony, I went to the dining hall for dinner in low spirits. As I was about to enter the building, a big red flag came into my sights - it was the national flag of China! Tremendous pride and happiness welled up inside me. I could not help pointing to the flag and telling my friends that this was the flag that represented my home country, a beautiful country in the East with a long history. As I returned to my dorm after dinner, I opened my email and there was the reply from the summer school manager. She apologized for what she said was a mistake that was caused by the carelessness of the staff, and thanked me for pointing it out so that they could fix it. At that time, I felt relieved for having done the right thing.

Lessons I Have Learned From This Experience About Respect

From my perspective, “being respectful to others” is particularly meaningful to me. I believe that only when people respect each other, regardless of race, gender, nationality or age, can they become true friends. I was glad that the problem was solved at once, and I learned more from this incident than from all of my other experiences.

On one hand, I have further realized the importance of respect and equality. When I discovered the absence of China’s flag, I felt like I was being treated with disrespect. Later, I reflected to myself: have I ever treated others without a respectful and equal attitude? Everybody would be upset when being mistreated. When I experienced this feeling myself, I got to know on a personal level how bad it was. This became a reminder for me to urge myself to be sure to treat everybody with respect and equality.

On the other hand, I have realized that if people are not respectful and considerate towards each other, they can easily bring about misunderstanding and hatred. In this case, when I found the absence of my national flag, I became angry so quickly that I failed to consider the difficulty of the staff. But anger and irrationality was not useful to me at all. As soon as I communicated with the principal and asked for respect, I received satisfactory results. I also considerately understood that this was only an accident, and I respected and appreciated their efforts. As Benjamin E. Mays said, “Honest communication is built on truth and integrity and upon respect of the one for the other.” In the future, when I encounter problems again, I will always remember to respect and understand others, and try my best to think with a cool mind and seek for proper solutions.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I will never forget this lesson, because I learned to respect others and to be respected by other. Without respect, I cannot imagine that the worlds we are living in would be like.