Why Unemployment Attacks Self-Respect Before Money

👉👉 Part 1 — Unemployment
👉 The First Thing You Lose Is Not Salary

The day income stops, the world does not collapse.
It rearranges itself quietly.

There is no siren announcing unemployment. No public declaration. No dramatic rupture. Morning still arrives on time. Neighbours still walk their dogs. Shops still open. News still scrolls endlessly. Life, as a system, continues without interruption.

And yet — something subtle shifts.

Phones that once rang casually now remain silent longer than expected. Invitations arrive late or not at all. Conversations that once flowed freely now pause awkwardly when the question appears: “So… what are you doing these days?”

No one is cruel.
No one is overtly dismissive.
No one says anything unkind.

The world simply becomes quieter around you.

This quiet is not neutral. It is not accidental. It is the sound of respect hesitating.

Unemployment does not announce itself as poverty. It does not arrive with empty cupboards or unpaid bills on day one. It arrives first as invisibility — a slow fading from social relevance, conversational weight, and unspoken acknowledgment.

The first thing you lose is not salary.
It is presence.

In modern societies, work is not merely a means of survival. It is the primary language through which identity is translated into social value. Occupation functions as shorthand — a compressed biography. Within seconds, it tells others how seriously to take you, how carefully to listen, how much patience to extend.

When that shorthand disappears, people do not know how to place you.

So they don’t.

And something ancient inside the human nervous system registers this immediately.

Neuroscience tells us that social exclusion activates the same neural pathways as physical pain. The brain does not distinguish sharply between a slap and a silence. Evolutionarily, this makes sense. For most of human history, exclusion from the group meant death. Belonging was survival.

Unemployment threatens belonging long before it threatens nutrition.

This is why joblessness feels humiliating even when temporary. Even when savings exist. Even when rationally, nothing catastrophic has happened yet.

The humiliation is not economic.
It is existential.

Why does society withdraw respect faster than opportunity?
Why does self-doubt arrive before hunger?
Why does a person who has done nothing unethical begin to feel morally suspect?

Because unemployment does not merely remove income — it interrupts the feedback loop of social affirmation.

In employed life, affirmation is ambient. It arrives through emails, meetings, deadlines, casual acknowledgments, even complaints. One’s existence is constantly validated by necessity. Someone needs you. Something depends on you. Your absence would be noticed.

Unemployment severs this loop abruptly.

Suddenly, no one urgently requires your time. No task collapses if you disappear for a day. No inbox fills overnight with expectation. The body interprets this absence of demand as absence of worth.

This is where many misunderstand unemployment pain. They assume anxiety comes from future fear — rent, food, stability. But for most people, the first wound is psychological, not logistical.

Research in social psychology consistently shows that identity threat precedes material stress in periods of job loss. Even individuals with financial buffers report immediate drops in self-esteem, confidence, and perceived social value. The mind reacts faster than the bank account.

“Everything we know about unemployment pain may be wrong.”

We imagine it as a numbers problem.
It is, in fact, a meaning problem.

Modern economies teach us, quietly but relentlessly, that value must be demonstrated continuously. That worth must be proven through output. That dignity is conditional — renewable monthly, cancellable without notice.

Unemployment exposes this ethical flaw mercilessly.

The shame does not come from idleness. Most unemployed people are not idle. They are searching, applying, worrying, recalibrating. The shame comes from realizing that one’s moral standing in society appears to be pegged to payroll status.

This realization lands heavily.

It explains why people apologize when they should not.
Why they explain themselves unprompted.
Why they avoid social gatherings even when invited.
Why silence feels safer than presence.

The world has not rejected them outright — and that is precisely what hurts.

Rejection can be processed.
Silence corrodes.

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👉👉 Part 2 — The Silent Shame
👉 Why Joblessness Feels Like a Personal Failure

Shame is one of the strangest emotions humans experience. It does not require an accuser. It does not need proof. It does not even require wrongdoing.

Shame can exist without anyone actively shaming you.

This is why unemployment is so psychologically destabilizing. No one explicitly says, “You have failed.” And yet the unemployed person begins to feel like a failure anyway.

This is shame without accusation.

Unlike guilt, which arises from an action, shame attaches itself to identity. Guilt says, “I did something wrong.” Shame whispers, “There is something wrong with me.”

Joblessness activates this whisper almost immediately.

People begin apologizing reflexively.
“I’m between things right now.”
“I’m just figuring stuff out.”
“I know I should be doing more.”

Apologies for existing.

These apologies are not social niceties; they are defense mechanisms. The psyche anticipates judgment even before it arrives. It internalizes society’s productivity ethic so deeply that absence of visible output feels like moral debt.

The key insight here is uncomfortable but essential:

Shame doesn’t come from lack of work.It comes from internalized judgment.

Where does this judgment originate?

From years of subtle conditioning. From childhood questions that prioritize “What do you want to be?” over “Who are you becoming?” From school systems that reward performance over curiosity. From corporate cultures that equate exhaustion with importance. From social narratives that celebrate “self-made” success while quietly ignoring structural volatility.

Over time, individuals absorb a dangerous equation:

Worth = usefulness.

When usefulness disappears — or is temporarily obscured — worth feels threatened.

This dynamic is particularly severe in men, though not exclusive to them.

Across cultures, men are socialized into provider identity. Provision is not merely economic; it is symbolic. To provide is to protect. To protect is to belong. Respect becomes the currency through which masculinity is validated.

When income stops, respect feels at risk. When respect feels at risk, identity destabilizes.

Men experiencing unemployment show higher rates of depression, withdrawal, and identity confusion than their employed counterparts, even when financial conditions are comparable. This is not weakness. It is the predictable outcome of tying selfhood to utility.

Masculinity, as socially constructed, is often tied to function. To be useful is to be respectable. To be needed is to be seen.

Unemployment interrupts this visibility.

The silence that follows is interpreted internally as evidence: “If I am not useful, I am not worthy of attention.”

This is not a rational conclusion. But it is an emotionally compelling one.

And here lies the ethical question we rarely ask:

Who taught us that dignity must be earned monthly?

No law states this explicitly. No moral code enshrines it openly. Yet behaviorally, society operates as though this were true. Respect flows most easily toward those whose time is already claimed by institutions.

The unemployed person, paradoxically, has time — and this abundance becomes suspicious.

Advice offered to them often carries moral undertones.
“Stay busy.”
“Don’t waste time.”
“Be productive.”

What appears as encouragement often masks anxiety: Unclaimed time makes us uncomfortable. It reminds us that value might not actually reside in busyness.

So shame is subtly outsourced inward. The individual becomes both defendant and judge.

This is why joblessness feels like a personal failure even when caused by external factors — economic downturns, restructuring, automation, illness. Rational explanations exist. Emotional logic ignores them.

The nervous system does not process macroeconomics.
It processes status threat.

And shame, once internalized, begins reshaping behavior. People speak less. Share less. Ask for help less. They shrink socially to minimize perceived burden.

This shrinking is not humility.
It is self-protective erosion.

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👉👉 Part 3 — Society’s Quiet Withdrawal
👉 How Respect Is Socially Conditional

Society rarely insults the unemployed.

It does something far more damaging.

It stops acknowledging them.

This withdrawal is not coordinated. There is no conspiracy. It happens through small, almost invisible shifts in interaction.

Conversations subtly change. When someone is employed, curiosity is expansive. Questions invite elaboration. “How’s work?” becomes a gateway to stories, frustrations, aspirations.

When someone is unemployed, questions narrow. They become transactional. “Any updates?” replaces “How are you?” Time-bound interest replaces open-ended engagement.

Advice morphs into moral instruction.

Suggestions carry urgency. “You should really…” “Have you tried harder?” “Maybe lower your expectations.” The implication is not logistical — it is ethical. Effort is assumed insufficient unless proven otherwise.

Help becomes surveillance.

Offers of support arrive with check-ins that feel evaluative. Progress is expected. Stagnation is suspect. The unemployed person becomes a project rather than a peer.

Respect is rarely revoked loudly.
It is withdrawn politely.

This politeness makes resistance difficult. There is nothing to argue against. No explicit injustice to confront. Only a growing sense that one’s presence requires justification.

Sociologically, this reflects a deep flaw in how modern societies distribute dignity. Respect is treated as a reward for contribution rather than a baseline human condition.

Those outside formal production cycles fall into a gray zone. Not condemned — just deprioritized.

The ethical cost of this is enormous.

When respect becomes conditional, vulnerability becomes dangerous. People hide transitions. They delay asking for help. They suffer silently to preserve perceived worth.

This silence compounds harm.

“The silent crisis no one wants to name.”

Unemployment is not just an economic gap; it is a relational rupture. It reveals how quickly recognition is tied to role, how easily presence becomes optional when productivity pauses.

And perhaps most unsettling of all — it shows us something uncomfortable about ourselves.

We do not merely fear being unemployed.
We fear becoming unseen.

Because in a world that equates worth with output, invisibility feels like erasure.

This is why self-respect is attacked first.
Money problems can be solved.
Social disappearance wounds something far deeper.

And until we confront this ethical reality — honestly, collectively — unemployment will continue to damage people long before it ever empties their wallets.

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👉👉 Part 4 — Money Vs Dignity
👉 Why Financial Fear Comes Second

There is a quiet truth most economic models never capture: people can endure material hardship far longer than they can endure social humiliation.

History, anthropology, and lived experience converge on this point. Human beings have survived famines, rationing, scarcity, and prolonged material deprivation across centuries. What breaks them faster is not hunger alone — it is being made to feel less than human while hungry.

This is why, when unemployment arrives, financial fear does not strike first.

Dignity does.

At first glance, this seems illogical. Bills remain unpaid. Savings begin to thin. Responsibilities accumulate. Rationally, money should dominate the emotional landscape.

Yet for many unemployed individuals, the earliest distress is not panic over resources — it is a deep, unsettling sense of social diminishment.

Why?

Because money scarcity is a logistical problem.
But respect scarcity is an existential one.

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🌟 The Difference Between Stress and Collapse

Financial stress activates problem-solving instincts. People calculate, prioritize, adapt. The mind shifts into management mode: budgets, adjustments, trade-offs. There is anxiety, yes — but also orientation.

Dignity loss, on the other hand, destabilizes orientation itself.

When respect erodes, individuals do not merely ask, “How will I manage?”
They begin asking, “Do I still matter?”

This distinction is crucial.

Logistical stress assumes a stable self navigating instability.
Existential collapse questions the stability of the self.

Research in behavioral psychology consistently shows that hope precedes effort. Effort precedes recovery. Without hope, motivation decays. Without motivation, even available opportunities remain unused.

And hope does not emerge from optimism alone. It emerges from felt dignity — the internal sense that one’s life is still legitimate, one’s presence still warranted, one’s future still deserving of investment.

This is why humiliation hurts more than hunger.

Hunger tells the body: resources are low.
Humiliation tells the psyche: you are expendable.

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🌟 Why Survival Anxiety Is Manageable

Survival anxiety is frightening, but it is familiar. Humans have evolved mechanisms to respond to scarcity. Stress hormones mobilize action. Communities historically shared resources. Families tightened structures. Survival, while painful, was collective.

Dignity loss, however, isolates.

It happens internally, silently, without communal acknowledgment. There are no rituals for dignity protection in modern unemployment. No social language to reassure worth independent of output. No shared frameworks to say, “You are still whole.”

As a result, the unemployed individual carries two burdens simultaneously:

• The practical challenge of survival
• The private erosion of self-respect

The second burden weighs heavier — and faster.

This explains a counterintuitive phenomenon observed in multiple social studies: individuals often report greater psychological distress during early unemployment than during later stages, even when finances worsen later.

The initial blow is not economic.
It is symbolic.

“What if poverty hurts less than disrespect?”

This question unsettles us because it challenges deeply held assumptions. It forces us to examine not just economic systems, but ethical ones.

If disrespect wounds more deeply than deprivation, then our societal response to unemployment is not merely insufficient — it is actively harmful.

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🌟 Money Can Be Replaced. Meaning Cannot — Easily

Money is quantifiable. Its absence is measurable. Its return is visible. Dignity operates differently. Once damaged, it does not automatically restore with employment.

Many who regain work after unemployment describe lingering effects:

• Over-apologizing
• Over-performing
• Fear of rest
• Anxiety around relevance

These are not financial scars. They are identity scars.

The unemployed person does not merely fear running out of money. They fear becoming irrelevant — socially, morally, existentially.

And irrelevance, in human psychology, is a form of death.

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👉👉 Part 5 — Karma, Work & Worth
👉 What Ancient Ethics Understood That We Forgot

Long before resumes, performance metrics, and productivity dashboards, civilizations grappled with a fundamental ethical question:

What makes a human being worthy of respect?

Ancient ethical systems — across cultures, but particularly within Dharmic philosophy — arrived at a conclusion that now feels almost radical:

Worth is inherent.
Action matters, but identity is not reducible to output.

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🌟 Karma Was Never a Verdict on Identity

In classical Dharmic understanding, karma refers to action and consequence — not character essence. One’s actions shape circumstances, not intrinsic worth.

Livelihood was important, yes. Work was valued. But work was not the measure of being.

A person could lose occupation without losing dignity. Hunger was tragic — it demanded compassion and response. But loss of respect was considered a moral failure of society, not of the individual.

This distinction matters profoundly.

Modern systems quietly inverted this ethic.

Today, productivity has replaced presence as the metric of value. Contribution has become conditional. Identity has merged with occupation so thoroughly that when work disappears, the self feels suspended.

“Modern ethics quietly replaced worth with productivity.”

This shift did not happen overnight. It evolved alongside industrialization, specialization, and monetization of time. As labor became commodified, so did identity. Hours translated into wages; wages into status; status into respect.

What was once sacred became transactional.

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🌟 Livelihood Was Never Self-Definition

In older ethical frameworks, livelihood described how one sustained life, not why one deserved it.

A farmer, artisan, teacher, or healer was respected not because of income, but because of participation in the social fabric. Even those without formal roles — elders, ascetics, wanderers — retained dignity through presence alone.

Contrast this with modern unemployment narratives.

When someone loses work today, the first question is rarely, “How can we protect their dignity?”
It is, “How quickly can they become useful again?”

Usefulness has become the gateway to worth.

This is not merely economic efficiency. It is ethical erosion.

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🌟 Why Hunger Was Tragic — But Dignity Loss Was Unacceptable

Ancient societies, despite material limitations, understood something modern abundance has obscured: humiliation destroys communities faster than scarcity.

A hungry person who retains dignity can recover.
A humiliated person struggles to rise even when resources return.

This is why many traditional cultures built mechanisms to preserve honor during hardship — shared meals, anonymous charity, communal labor. Assistance was structured to avoid shame.

Modern welfare and employment systems, by contrast, often require visibility of failure. Proof of need. Demonstrations of inadequacy. Surveillance disguised as support.

This is not accidental. It reflects an ethical worldview where worth must be continually justified.

Karma, in its original sense, never demanded this.

It recognized that circumstance fluctuates, but essence does not.

And in forgetting this, modern societies have created a paradox: people surrounded by resources yet starving for dignity.

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👉👉 Part 6 — The Inner Collapse
👉 When Self-Respect Begins to Erode

The erosion of self-respect does not announce itself loudly.

It begins in posture.

Eyes lower slightly during conversation.
Speech becomes tentative.
Sentences trail off, softened by qualifiers.

These are not personality changes.
They are protective adaptations.

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🌟 The Subtle Signs of Internal Damage

Avoiding eye contact is not shame — it is risk management. The unemployed individual senses vulnerability and reduces exposure.

Hesitating to speak is not lack of opinion — it is fear of invalidation. Without formal role, words feel less anchored.

Explaining one’s existence becomes routine. Context is offered before questions are asked. Justifications precede presence.

“I’m currently…”
“I was planning to…”
“I’m in transition…”

The reflection line captures this reality precisely:

The unemployed don’t stop working.
They start defending their right to exist.

This defense consumes enormous psychological energy.

Instead of directing effort outward — toward creativity, learning, rebuilding — energy is diverted inward, maintaining legitimacy.

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🌟 Survival Anxiety vs Identity Erosion

Survival anxiety is acute but time-bound. It spikes, then stabilizes as coping mechanisms form.

Identity erosion is slower — and far more dangerous.

It leaves residues:

• Reduced confidence
• Chronic self-doubt
• Fear of visibility
• Over-identification with future roles

Even after re-employment, these scars persist.

Neuroscientific research on chronic social stress indicates that prolonged identity threat reshapes neural pathways associated with self-perception. In simple terms: how we see ourselves changes.

This is why prolonged unemployment correlates not only with depression, but with lasting shifts in self-concept.

If ignored, silence becomes trauma.

Not because unemployment is inherently traumatic — but because unacknowledged dignity loss accumulates silently.

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🌟 Why This Matters Ethically

This inner collapse is not an individual failure. It is a systemic outcome.

When societies fail to separate worth from work, individuals internalize the gap. They blame themselves for structural volatility. They shrink to fit silence.

And the cost is not merely personal.

Communities lose voices.
Ideas remain unspoken.
Potential withdraws quietly.

Unemployment, left ethically unexamined, becomes not just an economic issue — but a collective diminishment of human presence.

If we continue to ignore this, we risk creating generations who fear rest, transitions, and vulnerability — not because they are weak, but because dignity has been made conditional.

And a society that conditions dignity on productivity will eventually run out of both.

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👉👉 Part 7 — Protecting Self-Respect In Transition
👉 Inner Ethics When Outer Roles Collapse

There is a dangerous misunderstanding embedded in modern recovery narratives: the idea that self-respect is something you lose during unemployment and regain after employment returns. This belief, though rarely spoken aloud, quietly governs behavior, posture, speech, and silence.

It is also profoundly false.

Self-respect is not restored by employment.
It is preserved before employment returns.

This section is not advice. Advice assumes control, certainty, and a linear path forward. Unemployment dissolves all three. What follows is reflective guidance — inner ethics that protect dignity when external structures collapse.

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🌟 The First Separation: Income Is Not Inner Worth

The most corrosive damage unemployment causes is not lack of money, but identity fusion. Years of social conditioning teach us to merge income with worth so seamlessly that when one disappears, the other feels erased.

Separating them is not motivational thinking. It is ethical survival.

Income is a transaction.
Worth is a condition of being alive.

This distinction sounds obvious in language but feels radical in practice. Because worth, in modern life, is rarely affirmed without output. Most people only experience respect when they are useful, busy, or producing. When these disappear, the nervous system panics — not because it lacks food, but because it lacks affirmation.

Preserving self-respect begins with an internal refusal:

I will not measure my existence by my current utility.

This refusal does not make the situation easier. It makes it cleaner. It prevents the inner voice from turning hostile. It stops the mind from converting circumstance into character judgment.

Research in cognitive psychology shows that people who can distinguish situational loss from identity failure recover faster — not financially first, but psychologically first. And psychological recovery precedes any sustainable external rebuilding.

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🌟 Dignity Without Explanation

One of the quietest forms of self-betrayal during unemployment is over-explanation.

Explaining oneself feels polite. Responsible. Mature. But often, it is an attempt to preempt judgment. It says, “Please understand why I am still worthy.”

The problem is not explanation.
The problem is the belief that explanation is required.

Maintaining dignity without explanation does not mean being defensive or secretive. It means allowing one’s presence to stand without footnotes.

This is extraordinarily difficult in cultures that treat employment status as social shorthand. Silence is misread as failure. Non-disclosure is interpreted as lack.

Yet, there is ethical power in restraint.

Choosing not to explain is not withdrawal.
It is boundary-setting.

It communicates — quietly, firmly — that worth is not up for debate. That transition does not equal deficiency. That absence of a role does not require apology.

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🌟 Choosing Silence Without Shame

Silence during unemployment is often confused with isolation. But there is a difference between chosen silence and imposed invisibility.

Imposed invisibility is humiliating.
Chosen silence can be protective.

When conversations become evaluative.
When curiosity turns into monitoring.
When concern feels conditional.

Silence becomes an ethical response.

Not all environments deserve access to vulnerability. Not all questions require answers. Protecting self-respect sometimes means withholding parts of yourself until the context is safe.

Psychologically, this preserves agency. Spiritually, it preserves alignment. Ethically, it prevents internal collapse.

“There is a way to suffer without shrinking.”

That way is not denial.
It is containment.

Holding your experience with care, rather than offering it prematurely to systems that do not know how to honor it.

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🌟 Why Preservation Matters More Than Restoration

Many people assume dignity can be rebuilt later. That once work returns, confidence will follow.

But dignity does not regenerate automatically.

If self-respect is eroded during transition, re-employment often restores status but leaves scars:

• Fear of future instability
• Over-identification with performance
• Reluctance to rest
• Anxiety around relevance

These are not signs of ambition.
They are symptoms of unresolved erosion.

Preserving self-respect during unemployment is not a luxury.
It is preventative care.

It ensures that when work returns, the self that returns with it is intact — not fragmented, over-defensive, or permanently braced against loss.

Unemployment tests more than resilience.
It tests inner ethics.

And those who protect dignity during uncertainty do not emerge untouched — but they emerge unbroken.

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👉👉 Part 8 — What Society Must Relearn
👉 Respect as a Human Constant

Individual preservation is necessary — but insufficient.

The deeper failure exposed by unemployment is collective. It reveals how quickly societies downgrade people when productivity pauses. It shows that respect, though spoken of as universal, is often distributed conditionally.

This is not a moral abstraction.
It is lived daily.

The ethical question cannot be avoided:

What kind of society judges people at their weakest moment?

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🌟 Families: When Concern Becomes Pressure

Families often believe they are being supportive — and sometimes they are. But subtle shifts occur.

Concern accelerates into urgency.
Patience shortens.
Identity becomes future-focused: “What will you do next?”

What is often missing is permission to exist without immediate answers.

Families must relearn a foundational ethic:
Support is not acceleration.
Love is not conditional on recovery speed.

When families treat unemployment as a temporary malfunction to be fixed quickly, they unintentionally transmit shame. When they treat it as a human transition deserving steadiness, they preserve dignity.

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🌟 Workplaces: The Myth of Merit Neutrality

Workplaces often frame themselves as merit-based systems. But layoffs, restructurings, and contract endings reveal a harsher truth: employment is not always aligned with effort or value.

Yet once someone exits, their narrative is rewritten.

Former colleagues become distant. Networks weaken. Invitations fade.

Organizations must relearn that departure does not equal deficiency. Alumni cultures, respectful exits, and continued recognition are not charity — they are ethical continuity.

How a workplace treats people when they leave defines its moral character more than how it rewards those who stay.

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🌟 Communities: The Cost of Conditional Belonging

Communities thrive on continuity. But modern communities often fracture around status.

When someone becomes unemployed, they may still live in the same place — yet feel socially displaced. Participation becomes awkward. Visibility decreases.

True community does not ask, “What do you contribute right now?”
It asks, “Who are you among us?”

Communities that fail this test teach people to hide vulnerability. And hidden vulnerability becomes silent suffering.

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🌟 Media Narratives: Productivity as Moral Theatre

Media plays a decisive role in shaping dignity narratives.

Stories glorify hustle, resilience, and comeback arcs — but rarely dwell on quiet endurance. Unemployment is framed as something to escape quickly, not something to survive ethically.

This creates a damaging implication: if you are still unemployed, you are not trying hard enough.

We need different stories. Stories that honor transition without dramatizing redemption. Narratives that decouple worth from velocity.

“We need to talk about dignity—now.”

Because silence here is not neutral.
It is complicit.

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👉👉 Part 9 — Conclusion
👉 People, Planet, Profit — and the Price of Disrespect

Unemployment is often discussed in economic terms. Numbers. Rates. Growth curves. Recovery cycles.

But beneath these abstractions lies a human reality far more fragile.

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People

Dignity should not fluctuate with employment status.
Self-respect is not a reward for usefulness.
It is a human right.

When people internalize conditional worth, societies produce compliant workers — but wounded humans. Creativity narrows. Risk-taking becomes fear-driven. Transitions turn traumatic.

Protecting dignity protects people — not sentimentally, but structurally.

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Planet

Systems that discard people when they are temporarily “unproductive” tend to discard ecosystems just as easily. Exploitation begins with dehumanization.

When worth is transactional, extraction becomes normal.

A society that respects human dignity regardless of output is more likely to respect land, water, and life beyond immediate utility.

The ethics are linked.

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Profit

Economies thrive not when people are afraid, but when they are secure enough to think, innovate, and rebuild.

Fear-based systems create short-term compliance and long-term fragility. Humane transitions, by contrast, produce resilient participation.

People recover faster when dignity is intact.
Organizations adapt better when transitions are humane.
Economies stabilize when humans are not reduced to expendable units.

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🌟 Closing Reflection

Money can be earned again.
Markets fluctuate.
Roles return.

But self-respect, once broken, takes far longer to rebuild.

A just society understands this.
A wise society protects both income and dignity.
A humane society never forces people to choose between survival and self-respect.

Unemployment tests economies.
But it reveals ethics.

And the true measure of progress is not how fast people return to work — but how well they are treated while they are not working.

That is the price of disrespect.
And the promise of doing better.

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