Self-Improvement
Accountability vs. Why Me?
Exploring Free Will, Blame, and Personal Responsibility
We sit on the front steps of our house soaking in the early morning sunshine and coffee. There’s a slight chill to the air that’s quicker to dissipate these days as we slip closer and closer to summer. Soon the heat will radiate in the glass windowpanes begging us to close the shutters the night before. Our conversation is easy and our semi-stray cats wind and twist around our legs requiring head scratches and a handful more food tossed their way.
I’m watching a tiny ant moving in the way that only tiny ants do — purposeful, in a bit of a hurry, as if he is on an important mission. He cannot be bothered with coffee or the sun or the slight chill in the air. He has work to do and from the looks of it, he’s already behind. In one moment, his world irreversibly tilts and shifts. My partner leans over and rests his forearm on the cool marble step.
Right on top of that ant.
I gasp — just like that, his tiny light blinks out of existence from this mortal plane. He’s destined to…who knows — another life, heaven, hell, does he shift into another formless dimension? What I do know is that one second he was here, and the next, he was gone. I wonder if this is how human accidents happen. I didn’t tell my partner about this accidental death that occurred during coffee time until much later. What was the point, you see? It wasn’t intentional.
What if an earthquake is merely some oversized god bumping the table our board game is set on? What if car crashes are at the hand of some violent supreme child-being who loves to hear the big smash and the twisting of metal. What if tsunamis are the splash of the hand of something mightier than you and I simply playing around in a god-sized pool? Some things happen no matter what we do, who we know, whether we are good or bad.
I head out on a 20km walk to the Panagia Krifti and I think about the ant. His lack of ill intent. His earnest hustle. How neither he nor his death garnered much thought from us. Major catastrophic events. Human hustle. The urge to pray for good outcomes and behave to avoid bad ones. The human tendency to credit good fortunes to our actions (or thoughts-and-prayers) and to view misfortunes as accidents we are not accountable for.
I think about friends who say they have bad luck and folks who tell me I have good luck. I think about this post from Light Watkins that says, “Excuses are a luxury enjoyed by the unaccountable.” I bet that hits different people in strong ways. I laughed when I saw it — I know precisely why I am not doing the things I say I want to do. It’s good to be called out, and remember that the only person in my way is me. There is a balance between being accountable for what you can make happen for you and working with happens to you.
When you find yourself stuck in the quagmire of Why, the only way out is to shift your attention to What Now? Quite literally the only thing you can control is how you will act in every situation. What can you change? If you summon the courage to state that you are entirely responsible for the direction ahead of you — what does that look like? How does it feel? [Note that I am not saying you need to accept fault or blame or culpability for situations out of your control (who your parents were, abuse, sexual assault, inherited diseases, etc…). But, you are responsible for how it moves forward.]
We are men and women and everything in between, yet we hurry and scurry like ants. We pray to invisible gods to be granted wishes that are well within our scope of working towards. We damn bad luck for failed relationships when we choose incompatible partners. We rail at the sky for dumping rain and rejoice in the beauty of rainbows. We get stuck in our routines heading back and forth from work to home to the market and squeeze in a week or two off with friends. We feel pushed and pulled along the course of life and then, in a blink, we are wiped out. But are we ants or are we (wo)men?
You can do so many things — You can change careers, you can find the love of your life, you can move to another city or country, you can leave an unhappy relationship, you can find supportive friends that spark your creativity. You can learn new skills. You can go back to school. You can quit your job. You can spend less. You can earn more. You can take ownership for your direction in life. You can carve your own path. You can make your dreams come true. You can sit and wallow and blame everyone around you. It truly is your choice. There is an immeasurable power in taking the reins of your life. The power comes with responsibility — if you are steering the ship and run it into the harbor rocks, that’s squarely on you. You may not like the consequences, you may not like the sacrifices, you may not like the price exacted — but it is your choice.
It’s always easier to see choices in hindsight where we previously thought there were none. I’m curious to hear your reflections — were there times in the past you can (now) see you had choices? Do you feel you are on auto-pilot? Do you find yourself wishing for a different life? What would you change if you could change? Drop me a comment below or feel free to send an email!
