Of shame and respect

In more ways than not, I guess that anybody's life can be measured in these two very common parameters: shame and respect. And to a person like me, I would rate that measurement even more if that feeling is from inside about yourself. There is no shame comparable to the shame you feel for yourself. Everyone would agree that no man can stand in front of anyone if he can not stand before his own eyes. Even the best have found it difficult to cope up with it. Respect for your own identity is the natural negative counterpart of shame. If you respect yourself, you can stand strong, with or without people backing you.

These most critical self evaluations of shame and respect are really a great challenge. Having a whole baggage of thoughts in my mind, I have really tried to find how i score. Once one starts thinking about all the various aspect of his/her life, i think it wouldn't be difficult to relate them to these basic parameters. Most of one's actions result in generation of these feelings. You would feel proud or ashamed of your actions, words, efforts, achievements, failures, relationships. Its not difficult to relate. What is difficult though is to measure. I mean whenever you chose any actions lets say. Are you more proud of it for the success it brought or ashamed at the price that you paid for it. One would surely go one way and then the other at different points of time when reflecting on that.

I have discovered through this 'self evaluation', that almost all my acts that have made me feel a respect for myself are related to some aspect in that very act, that makes me feel ashamed. Its never ever a pure act that could be put in one category. I would want to give an example.
I have been very proud of myself for my honesty with my best friends. I would think that I must respect that about me. I feel that everybody should respects honesty. Everyone respects honesty and even that respect adds on to my own respect for myself. But on the most crucial occasions, I have found that my straight and honest words have ended up hurting people i really care for. i always think of myself as a person who lives for the love of the one i chose to love. and if that's my priority, then this honesty has been brought more shame than respect for myself. I can't express how desperate I feel to let everyone know that I am clueless in making this decision of what way to chose. To let people know about how good or bad I feel about them. I don't know if lying to them to make them happy is the best way or being honest is. there seems to be quite a lot of shame and respect in each of the options. But more often than not, the option that I chose seems to be the one loaded with shame and guilt. I feel like failure because all those things that I am sure are my life's priorities, i have failed in them more miserably than any other thing in my life. The very people that I care the most about, I have ended up hurting them the most.
In the end I think that however hard i try to correct myself, i wouldn't end up on the respect side of my evaluation. The shame may go away but I am not sure if the respect shall ever come back