Tindogan mo an imo binuhatan! Responsibility means feeling it is
your duty to deal with what comes up, being accountable, and/or being able to
act independently and make decisions without authorization. There are both
moral and personal responsibilities.
Have you experienced being blamed
with something which is not YOUR fault? There are those people around (friends,
family members, companions, superiors) who do not take responsibilities of
their actions. Worse, they will even give you tasks not your own and expect
that these will turn out to be what they have expected and even beyond what is
expected!
In ethics, moral responsibility
is primarily the responsibility related to actions and their consequences in
social relations. It generally concerns the harm caused to an individual, a
group or the entire society by the actions or inactions of another individual,
group or entire society. This is the mechanism by which blame can be placed,
and influences many important social constructs, such as prosecution under the
legal system.
It is proposed that
self-responsibility or self-accountability is the quintessential defining
attribute to qualify as an adult. The word responsibility literally means
“response-ability,” that is, possessing the ability to respond. So
self-responsibility means to not only have the ability to respond, decide and
choose, but further to participate in an engaged, most practical possible
fashion in taking responsibility for your entire life (Friedman, 2018).
Then why is it that there are
some that are incapable of taking the responsibility of their actions? There
are even instances that we allow others decide for us and then put the blame on
them when things do not come out right.
Being responsible means taking
care of yourself and understanding that every act or action has a consequence.
Likewise, as psychotherapist Albert Ellis pointed out, many people find it
easier to avoid or evade certain responsibilities than to deal with them. This
is a defense mechanism that makes it easier for them to blame others for their mistakes.
Thus, people project their discomfort onto others without knowing that the key
to change lies inside them.
We have individual roles. The
tasks that we do must be done by us. Let us not create more chaotic
relationships by playing safe. Risks must be taken and the mistakes that we
encounter along the way are part of our journeys.
We have to allow others trek
their own paths.