Respect

Definition

How the warrior treats himself, his instructors, his partners, his family, and his community.

The lesson

In martial arts, respect creates safety. In everyday life, it creates trust. Beginners and advanced students carry equal human worth.

Respect is conduct, not a mood. Let someone finish. Speak as if they have the same worth as you. Leave one shared place better than you found it. The people at home are the truer test than the stranger you are polite to.

How. In one conversation, do not answer until they finish. Repair one small thing in a room before you leave it.

Watch. Silence you use only to wait for your turn, or courtesy in public and carelessness at home.

The book finishes this. The etiquette of the training hall as a moral system, and how it retrains a man who is polite in public and careless in private.

The rest of this virtue