Our Responsibility

It often seems difficult to see the forest for the trees when we don’t understand our responsibility to ourselves and each other. We blame, and we do this because we learned it from somewhere. We all have placed blame on circumstances out of our control.

Many of us get stuck in accepting things as they are. It takes awareness and effort to understand we have a responsibility for what takes place in the world through our actions and inactions.

I’ve spent the last five weeks listening to people of all walks of life. For many, life is a response to a world we participate in. Change is also seen as an impossible problem to be solved.  People shared everything that is wrong with the world and the lists were long. It was easy to blame McDonald’s for charging ten dollars for a meal and politicians for the state of the world.  

But what if everything is our responsibility? Maybe there is no one to blame and we can shift our energy to what is possible. What if instead of supporting companies that don’t care about our health and wellbeing, or destroy oyr environment, we supported local businesses who do? And we even made an effort to find them?

Restoring Our Responsibility

Sometimes we take responsibility for our actions and sometimes we don’t. We all fumble and flounder, stumbling here and there. We might take a little bit of ownership for issues we created but not always entirely. 

We sometimes make up stories for what we can and cannot do.

We can take personal responsibility by understanding why we feel we are stuck and get to the root cause of why we choose to judge or blame. We can navigate our way by trusting ourselves, and taking accountability for our choices.

We can look at where we blame ourselves for what we feel goes wrong around us. And when we feel someone else created the mess around us. But we can also choose to step out of the story and take a healthier approach. 

Instead of focusing on what’s wrong, we can look at what is possible and what is in our control like our choices.

Creating Healthy Boundaries

Some of us take on guilt for all the woes of the world, including thunderstorms some times. It causes many of us to want to save or fix all that is wrong.  And we often lose our way when we focus on everything that is wrong and even us being wronged.

But we have an opportunity to let go of any of these feelings by opening our hearts to what we want to create. When we take our responsibility and step into our power, we can release these beliefs.  

This is a time to be in the flow of life where we embrace both forgiveness and responsibility. 

Being responsible allows us to take action and no longer play the role of an observer. It is our responsibility to pay attention and show up in our life. That’s where our power lies.

“People have forgotten this truth,” the fox said.

“But you mustn’t forget it.

You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.

You’re responsible for your rose.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince