“There is… no order in any camp that is not fenced about with discipline and respect.” From Sophocles’ play “Ajax”.
I am so very fond of these words spoken by Menelaus, the mythological king of Sparta (and husband of the beautiful Helen of Troy), to Teucer (half-brother of Ajax). What Menelaus said back then, still contains so much truth. Discipline and respect, these are two indispensable role-players in the make-up of the moral individual as well as the moral community and moral world.
Please, clear your mind and reflect on these two concepts, and imagine your own life as a life in which these two predominate. Discipline in thinking and in all your actions, as well as respect towards animate and inanimate objects, are crucial in the formation of the moral world, in fact, self-respect yields discipline, making them intertwined to such an extent that the one cannot do without the other.
Thucydides said that self-control breeds self-respect; Kwame Nkrumah said that true freedom is not possible without discipline. I entirely agree with both of them because a disciplined nature is what sets you free from being a slave to undisciplined thinking and living. This goes hand in hand with that of respect, especially when it comes to self-respect.
Where discipline and respect lack, there can only be discord and anarchy. If only humanity would cultivate self-respect and a better sense of discipline, then imagine, for a moment, how better a world we may establish. Will you start to cultivate these two in your life, from today forward?
Discipline and respect constitute a barbed wire, a fence,
a thicket that grows very dense.
enclose your camp with this duality
then great things will come forth, you'll see.
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