What Does Responsibility Look Like?

After seven months, I can only speak for myself, but I have lost a ton of my initial adrenaline fueled mojo for digging deep. Now, I’m just kind of worn down by the uncertainty of it all. The initial core values that helped me rest and reframe and look for healthy distractions from the death counts and discussions on “to mask or not to mask” have been fine but I sense a need to shift.

The temptation when we need to pivot is to blame our old strategies for not working. Unhelpful! Instead, I can move to a more proactive approach. I can think about responsibility.

First, let’s talk about accountability versus responsibility.

Responsibility is what we are charged with doing. I have a responsibility to be faithful to my husband - I agreed to that. I have a responsibility to take care of my body, mind and spirit - I signed up for that when I became aware of the sacred calling to do so. I have a responsibility to be a lifelong learner - I chose that when I realized how much I did not know. There are more but I think you get the point. Bottom line: we all have responsibilities that we have chosen or have been assigned to us.

Accountability is the reckoning. It is the evaluation of my effectiveness carrying out my responsibilities. So when it feels like my body, mind and spirit are flagging, it is my responsibility to make necessary changes to restore equilibrium. Accountability is how I learn what needs to change.

Here is a ridiculously simple example.

Suppose I have agreed to take responsibility for my body because it fits with my core value of living a meaningful life. (I have decided that optimum living will require me to take care of the only vessel my soul has to enable it to flourish.) I establish some metrics for accountability, which usually requires some outside input. I ask an exercise guru to help me evaluate my training; I ask my doctor to help me evaluate my overall health. I ask my spiritual director to help me evaluate my soul work. When the metrics are off, I think of what needs to change (with the help of my support community), not who to blame. Blame is a waste of good energy chasing bad, negative ways of thinking. The beauty, for me at least, of this way of living is that I avoid my natural but totally ineffective way of understanding my life by looking outside of myself to understand me. Pandemics and politics - these are outside of my circle of responsibility. Sure - I vote, I try to educate myself about my part in healing the world. But much of it is beyond my responsibility. My self-evaluations (accountability) show the impact “other” is having on my responsibilities - and I am responsible for figuring out how to adjust to that so that I can continue to live by my core values, as expressed through my responsibilities.

I dunno, but I wonder. Do you ever think that sometimes we get so distracted by “other” that we forget to think about all that we could be responsible for? And then...take action?