On Excessive Responsibility

From childhood, many schools of psychology teach us to take radical responsibility for our own lives — for everything that happens in them. Every event, they say, is the result of our actions and ours alone.

In reality, though, it’s not so clear-cut. Of course we shape our lives through what we do, but some things — unpleasant ones, especially — happen outside our control. Take responsibility for those, and the body simply can’t carry the load. We start to do one of two things:

— feel helpless and anxious, blaming ourselves for what we can’t change;

— or push the responsibility and the blame onto others, until that becomes a habit.

Hyper-responsibility plays a cruel trick on us.

It’s worth seeing the difference clearly: if an event is outside our control, we can’t and shouldn’t take responsibility for it. But that doesn’t free us from responsibility for our reaction to it, even when none of it is our fault.

If, God forbid, someone gets hit by a reckless scooter rider, that’s not the victim’s fault. But what to do next — that’s already on them.

I’m drawn to Jean-Paul Sartre’s view. In his work on existentialism he wrote that there is no predestination — we choose our own fate. Yet life is full of uncertainty, and we make our choice all the same, in any circumstances, at times choosing between bad options.

If something or someone irritates us, it’s our choice that we let it. We carry the responsibility for what to do about it: stay irritated, stop paying attention, change it, or remove it from our life.

Growth is impossible without responsibility, but too much of it leads more often to psychic wounds.

Here’s to learning not to blame ourselves for what lies outside our control — and to owning our reaction to it! 😎