A little while ago I heard somebody talking about learning to take responsibility – an issue that I feel is hugely neglected. They said something to the effect that it’s easy for a person to take credit for the good things that happen, but most don’t think about the bad things happening as being their responsibility also. They look for something or someone else to blame, even if it’s just bad luck.

And my immediate reaction was, “Whoa, you’ve got that backwards there, pal, don’t you?”

Then I thought about it because, ya know, I often have initial thoughts before I think.

While I agree with this person’s generalization that in our society we tend to take credit for good things and resist taking the blame for bad, it dawned on me that I’m quite the opposite. I’m much more comfortable (ie: it feels more instinctive and natural) taking responsibility for stuff that goes wrong than for stuff that goes right. It may be a product of the passive-aggressive culture I grew up in, I don’t know, but it seems ludicrous now that I’ve thought about it.

I believe that we allocate our personal responsibility relevant to our expectations – of ourselves, of others, of life. If you expect, or assume, that something just is, naturally and without any kind of direct influence from you, you’re not as likely to take the credit (or the blame) when it happens.

So does that mean that I expect that good things just are, spontaneously, but that bad things are a result of an action? Hmm.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to be much better at going with the flow and adopting the attitude that things happen for a reason. As always, I don’t know if that’s a truth or a delusion, but it makes life a lot easier to bear and it keeps me from padding the walls with rubber. When “bad” things happen (“bad” and “good” being grossly inadequate words to be using), I still assume a great deal of responsibility for it. But now it’s tempered with the chosen belief that something positive came out of the experience, which takes a chunk of the sting out of it and makes it easier to move on instead of being frozen in place playing the coulda/shoulda/if only game.

But when something good happens, I tend to view it as being something that just is naturally, regardless (and sometimes in spite) of me. Consequently, I don’t very often take responsibility for the good things in my life – of which there are many.

What an idiot. I spout off all the time about balance, and responsibility, and any number of armchair psychological theories, and yet I’ve been dumber than a bag of hammer handles on this, for way too many years.

I was talking with a friend about it and she suggested that it was understandable given my expectations in life. I figured, “No, I was just dense,” but the issue of expectations is a recurrent one for me, so I’ve been pondering this closely.

(from an old, unfinished, draft)