Alienation

 

                                               (image: youtube.com)

There was a time when a teacher volunteered to operate the sound system during a learners' recital, but I declined the offer. It was not because I questioned the teacher's capability, but because I did not want to place him in a position where a technical failure could unfairly become his burden. Instead, we hired professional technicians because ensuring a smooth program was their responsibility. If they failed to deliver, I could demand accountability without reservation because it was the work they were engaged to perform. Accountability should rest with those entrusted, equipped, and expected to carry it.

That experience reminded me that our instinct to locate responsibility extends far beyond school programs. Lately, we have witnessed an outpouring of commentaries and formal investigations surrounding the death of a beloved basketball player and the recent school shooting in Tacloban. In moments of tragedy, we seldom find rest until someone can be held accountable. Perhaps it is our way of making sense of the senseless, believing that once responsibility is identified, grief becomes more bearable and chaos appears, however briefly, to be under control.

This tendency is hardly new. Social psychologist Gilad Hirschberger (2006) argues that people seek explanations after tragedy because doing so restores a sense of order and predictability in a world suddenly made uncertain. Accountability, therefore, is not merely a legal or social expectation. It is also a psychological need.

Yet there is a deeper form of alienation when our search ends with blaming others and never reaches the difficult terrain within ourselves. What if, instead, we asked questions that have no easy answers? What is this tragedy asking me to learn? If I were the coach, would my good intentions alone absolve me of the unintended consequences of my decisions? If I were the parents of the shooter, have I become so consumed by the countless demands of modern life that I failed to notice the quiet unraveling of my own child? These questions are not meant to indict anyone. Rather, they remind us that every public tragedy carries a private invitation to examine the parts of ourselves we too often leave unquestioned.

In an era that seems to require scapegoats to make sense of tragedy, we often forget to place ourselves within the narrative, not as spectators searching for someone to blame, but as individuals capable of becoming part of the solution. We become so preoccupied with identifying who failed that we overlook the more unsettling question of how our own choices, omissions, and responsibilities can help prevent the same tragedies from happening again.

Perhaps the greatest measure of our humanity is not how quickly we identify who is at fault, but how honestly we allow tragedy to transform us. Accountability will always have its rightful place because justice demands it. Yet beyond the verdicts, the investigations, and the public outrage lies a quieter responsibility that belongs to each of us. Every loss asks whether we have become more attentive, more compassionate, and more faithful to the roles entrusted to us.

Society is not made safer simply because the guilty are punished. It becomes safer when ordinary people choose, in the silence of their everyday lives, to become better parents, teachers, leaders, neighbors, and citizens. Perhaps accountability has never been only about finding the right person to blame. Perhaps it has always been about becoming the right person to carry our own responsibilities.