11/1/11

Dear Kayla,

I want to write a little bit about taking responsibility.

Most people say it is essential. I agree. Taking responsibility for your life and your treatment is critical. You cannot improve in the long-term relying totally on others. While most people are well-meaning and may be able to help you, no one totally and perfectly understands you and your life. No one can completely understand another person; we are far too complicated for that. Add to that that these well-meaning people may die, retire, or have a crisis of their own, and you will see the need to learn to rely on yourself.

Taking responsibility is a very strong, powerful concept. Like most powerful concepts it has some dangerous applications. Some people use it too broadly as an answer to everything. The assumption seems to be if a person accepts responsibility s/he will immediately achieve enlightenment.
Second, and more troublesome, defining your responsibility can be difficult at first. One trait I had growing up — which I later read was common in disturbed children — is that I held myself responsible for everything that went wrong, including the weather.

For me, the first real step to taking responsibility is therefore to define what I was and was not reasonably responsible for. As I just said, that was not easy. I finally learned to start with what I already knew. I made two columns in my mind: One for things I was clearly responsible for and the other for things I was clearly not responsible for. At first I could only categorize the clear-cut black and white; the rest I ignored. As I grew more used to those two categories, I started to interpret more shades of gray.

I have found that general technique to be useful much of the time. In order to make sense of something, I generally categorize the two clear-cut extremes. Once I have done that, I am gradually able to understand more complicated and nuanced issues.

Good luck.