It's Your Fault

Family on Friday!!!

Response ability.  If you break it up into the root words, you can see that responsibility has nothing to do with obligation or charges.  To have a responsibility is to have an ability to respond to a situation or person.

So, do you?  How?  Taking ownership of your responsibility means understanding that you and you alone control your actions (or lack thereof).  You cannot control other people.  Sure, we all want to control someone else at some point in our lives.  Because, let's face it, people do things we don't like.  Things we would like to have stopped them from doing, or made them do, whatever the case may be.

When it's a member of your family, it can feel like they are an extension of yourself and you may even ordinarily function like a unit.  But, sooner or later, even your family will remind you that they are their own individuals and have their own responsibility.

Don't blame them.  Yes.  You are able to respond that way.  But, in any given situation, you are able to choose how you respond.  If you don't like the outcome.  If you get angry.  If you get sad.  If you get sick.  If you are injured.  Blame yourself.

Take ownership of your responsibility.  It's up to them if they will do the same.  One life is hard enough to live.  Living two, three, four, twenty other lives isn't going above and beyond the call of duty - it's impossible.

For some reason, focusing on what other people are or aren't doing has become commonplace.  In traffic, in checkout lines, in bathrooms, in other people's houses, or, on a much grander scale, Politics and Economics.  The solution to most problems isn't what "they" did or are doing.  The solution comes from what did you do?  What are you doing?

I could make a list of "problems" and answer them with a list of "solutions."  But, that's not how I plan on using my responsibility.