Responsibility
In this sense, we will employ Steven R. Covey’s use of the word. He explains that all of us are “response-able” or able to respond. In other words we can choose how to respond to the situational effects of our given circumstance. Many argue that their responses are someone else’s fault—I have a hot temper because I’m an Irish red-head; It’s my parent’s fault; I didn’t have the opportunities others did; I was abused; I’m too fat, too thin; too ugly, too beautiful; too dark, too light, too short, too tall; too rich, too poor; it wasn’t in the stars; et cetra at nauseum. These people are really just arguing for their limitations—caught up in their self-justification endeavoring to excuse their feelings of fear, inadequacy, or guilt and shame for inaction. Jim Rohn said, “You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of. You don't have charge of the constellations, but you do have charge of whether you read, develop new skills, and take new classes.”
Once we recognize our “response-ability,” we are faced with the truth of our responsibility. We are responsible for what we think, feel, say, and do in response to our circumstances. Concurrently, we are responsible for the consequences pertaining to our choices. There is no shirking that responsibility. We can hide from it, ignore it, or deny it, but in the end, there it is. Every choice is a cause which in turn has its effects. It also means that if you don’t like the effects you are experiencing, you can change them by changing the causes.
“If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree.” –Jim Rohn
At this point I may have lost some of you. For the idea of such responsibility strikes such fear into the hearts of some that they choose to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over their head.
Perhaps this would be a good time to consider whether freedom after all, is what you really want. The very idea! Who in their right mind would not chose freedom over captivity? Consider the illuminating social study that the fall of the
But what of the modern individual; have we not similar tendencies? How many of us are prone to shirk our responsibilities? Be honest now. Have you ever heard someone say, “It’s not my fault!” Have you ever heard anyone say that when you were the only one in the room? It’s true we are a generation of “excusiologists.” We employ billions of dollars per annum to attorneys, courts and legislators to either get us off the hook, or to hold someone else responsible. The most absurd example is the so called McDonald’s Coffee case. While the public scoffs at the plaintiff as being the fool who was unwilling to accept responsibility for dropping her coffee, the truth, as the court found, was that McDonald’s was unwilling (without compulsion) to accept responsibility for persistently preparing a beverage to a temperature sufficient to cause third degree burns and skin grafts. [1]
Such compulsive fault finding and placing blame perpetuates a subconscious life philosophy toward the same end. The results are people who, as stated above, feel that they are owed something and that they are not to blame—for anything. The often unspoken end to that line of thinking is, “and therefore I have no control.” Ironic isn’t it? Control, or self-determination is one thing that permeates nearly all of the human needs Maslow depicted in his 1943 paper.[2]
Thus we have exposed another great lie of the human condition. We tend to do things erroneously believing they will yield certain results, when the natural consequences are actually contrary to what we want. Much has been and could be written on this topic, which is, in my opinion, the very essence of insanity or at the very least dysfunctional. Suffice it to say that we as sentient beings will accept certain basic needs being gratified by others for a time. But there comes a point when our needs for esteem and self-actualization cannot be given us by someone else. Those needs are not satisfied unless we take the responsibility to do so. I submit that once one has experienced the sweet satisfaction of self actualization, he is, or should be, far less willing to allow someone else to remove from him the responsibility for the baser needs. This is nature of growing up.
It is an unspoken but commonly held belief that what we as people really seek deep down is the freedom from consequences. This fact was vocalized to my surprise by a group of youth who were responding to the question ‘What is freedom?’ Their answers feeding off one another in a brainstorming fashion eventually drew out that what they really thought freedom to be is freedom from consequences. But in the same instant they said it, they realized, as you just did, that there is no such thing. Yet that is what we humans seem to crave. Historian Edward Gibbon on the fall of Athenian democracy said,
In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security.
They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort and freedom...
When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them...
When the freedom they wished for most -- was freedom from responsibility...
Then,
But freedom is not free. Neither is captivity free. There is a price for both. The difference is that you often don’t know the price for captivity and ignorance until later—sometimes too late. [4]
Here is indicated the inextricable connection between personal and political freedom which will be discussed later on. The important message is the imperative nature of personal freedom and the responsibility it demands.
We all feel that we would like to do certain things and not suffer any consequences for those choices. That is the essence of our carnal natures. That is the essence of what we must master. The mastery of those tendencies is what constitutes character and maturity.
"What if you could be anything, or anybody, you chose to be? Think about it. What would you choose to be?" Nido Qubein
[1] Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants, P.T.S., Inc., No. D-202 CV-93-02419, 1995 WL 360309 (Bernalillo County, N.M. Dist. Ct. Aug. 18, 1994) details from nmcourts.com
[2] Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96. (See Chart in Appendix.)
[3] Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1998 edition, Wordsworth Editions Limited
[4] In his book Escape from Freedom, Eric Fromm explores this social/psychological dichotomy. He writes, “The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton (mindless conformity), identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.....freedom has a twofold meaning for modern man: that he has been freed from traditional authorities and has become an 'individual,' but that at the same time he has become isolated, powerless and an instrument of purposes outside of himself, alienated from himself and others; furthermore, that this state undermines his self, weakens and frightens him, and makes him ready for submission to new kinds of bondage. Positive freedom on the other hand is identical with the full realization of the individual's potentialities, together with his ability to live actively and spontaneously." (Eric Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941, Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 115 West 18th Street, new York New York, 10011, clarification added.)
See installment four on Change.
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