Mea Culpa

 

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.