That seems to be the question everyone asks these days. It doesn’t seem to matter what the issue is, there seems to be an almost universal rush to find someone, or something, to point to and say “That’s the reason” or “He’s at fault”.
What ever happened to good old ‘taking responsibility’, and how did it get replaced by ‘placing responsibility’?
I have people tell me how life isn’t how they think it should be, and it’s because their parent got divorced, were too strict on them when they were growing up, didn’t come to their baseball games, teachers didn’t encourage them enough, or any of 1,000 other excuses for what ever ‘plight’ they see themselves in.
Those arguments might carry some weight when told to me by a 16 year old, but when it’s someone over the age of 21, my response is almost always, “So, who has been making the decisions in your life for the last (pick a number) two years?”.
You see I believe we’re all responsible for our own lives. We’re supposed to live, get up every day, do the best we can, learn from our mistakes and just keep moving. We’re not (in my mind) supposed to sit around, lament the current state of our life and look for someone to blame.
Fixing blame, accomplishes absolutely nothing. Oh, it may make you feel better, about yourself, or the situation, but in the final analysis it doesn’t change a damn thing.
So, Ok, you’ve determined you had a screwed up childhood, or that financial problems prevented you from finishing (or even attending) college. That was then; this is now, what’s holding you back “now”? If you’re living on your own, it’s certainly not your parents any longer. If you’re still living with your parents at age 25, and still complaining about how they messed up your life, you’ve got an entirely different set of problems.
Problems, which brings me directly to the “Psychiatric” community, now I’m the first to admit there are folks out there with serious mental problems (Serial Killer springs to mind) and need professional help, and possibly medication. I’m having trouble however; believing that 5 to10 % of the population needs an antidepressant medication just to get through the day. (
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/hus04.htm ) What did our parents do? Their parents? Their Grandparents?
Some folks will say that well they ‘drank’… that maybe true to some degree, but, if you are to believe statistics, people still drink,
and take these medications. (Despite all the bad press about drinking, I tend to think that drinking, socially, and in moderation, has the benefit of letting us interact with others. Taking that pill is sort of like drinking alone.) Is life that much tougher today? Are the ‘stresses’ of our daily lives so intense as to require all of this medication? I somehow doubt it.
Our lives might be more boring, less stressful, and even more mundane than theirs… but when I think about it, I’m having trouble finding the added stress.
I work in a cubicle, in a climate controlled building. I live in a climate controlled house. I drive a climate controlled car. My grandparents (on both sides) had none of the above for most of their lives.
My idea of work is slaving away over a keyboard, my parents, grandparents, well they had physical, manual labor jobs, often working 12 (or more) hour days usually with no ‘overtime’ pay anywhere in the equation.
Television, cable TV, computers, internet, (fully automatic) washing machines, dishwashers, garbage disposals, power tools, lawn and garden equipment, motorized travel, commercial flight, microwaves… and on and on… these ‘modern conveniences’ are all recent additions to things within reach of the average household.
Why is it we all seem to be so ‘stressed’, or even depressed?
I ask myself the question, mainly because I think, at the core; our need to place responsibility elsewhere is rooted in the stress we seem to feel. We’re ‘at the limit’ of out tolerance for stress, and let’s face it, taking responsibility is stressful for most folks.
I believe we’re stressed at the sheer banality of our existence. We have (for the most part) no real problems, we eat regularly, have a dry place to sleep at night, and clean clothes to wear (most days). I’m not so sure that was true fifty or sixty years ago.
I think part of the problem is we humans, in this society, feel very out of control, for the most part. We’re working in large corporate ‘machines’, where often we’re not much more than a small cog on a very large wheel. Unable to derive much personal satisfaction from the job, we begin to pursue other areas to get that satisfaction. Often that pursuit ends up with us buying more and more things, amassing more and more debt, and in the end feeling more and more, out of control.
As I’ve mentioned before, Control, is an illusion. We’re never ‘in control’, if we allow ourselves to believe we control anything, entirely, we’re setting ourselves up for a fall.
William Bennett, former drug czar, recently said:
"unbridled capitalism is a problem to human beings. We are constantly pushing our children and adults to buy things that they do not need. We are making desires into needs and we are, as a result, not living at the center. We are misreading the essential human condition".In the end, some things are just the result of the normal chaotic nature of the universe. Others however can be traced directly to choices and decisions we make.
Don’t allow yourself to blame your parents, Catholic/Jewish/Protestant guilt, an ex spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend or friend, a boss, or anyone or anything else for your life… take responsibility. If you don’t like where you are, make a choice, a decision to change it. Look at where you are, decide where you want to be, and head for that place.
New job, new career, quit smoking, quit drinking, lose weight… whatever, make a decision and go for it! I’m convinced that the only way to remove yourself from unhappiness is to envision where you would be happy, and embark on the journey to get there.
It’s the lack of action, that being frozen in a place you do not like, that leads to blaming others for your plight. Blaming someone else for your problems, does not solve the problem, it just makes being unhappy a little less intolerable, for the moment.
Any thoughts?
Technorati Tags: Comfort - Decisions
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