Taking Responsibility

Nobody takes responsibility for their actions anymore. Everyone seems to pass the blame on to someone else or something else. At some point in all our lives we develop the ability to make conscious decisions. I believe it happens early in life when we make our preferences known through temper tantrums or keeping our lips closed tight against some food we are unwilling to try. As we go through life, the decisions and choices we have to make inherently become more important. We choose who we want to associate with, what clothes we want to wear, where we want to go and with who. At some point, the decisions we make begin to have more lasting consequences. If we're lucky, our parents have led us by example. We have been taught how to think decisions through and have learned to appreciate the impact our choices may have on others. We, for the most part, develop compassion for others, for their possessions and their feelings. We learn how to apologize. However, things seem to be different these days. Kids curse at their parents, throw fits in grocery stores, mistreat their pets and other animals, disrespect authority, and feel extremely entitled. When I was a teenager, I would never have thought that not going to school was an option...only the really bad kids dropped out. We respected the police and showed it. We got grounded. If we did something wrong, or something that hurt another person, we were made to apologize and make amends. That doesn't happen anymore. A while back, there were teenagers out in front of our house late at night. My son woke up and heard them talking. Being protective of his new truck, he put on his shoes and headed for the door. Just as he reached the door, his truck alarm went off and he took off like a bullet chasing the kids across the greenbelt, thinking they had vandalized his truck. In the meantime, I called the police. Pretty soon through the dark, I see my son come back with one of the kids in-tow. We asked the kid what they had done and he said they threw a water balloon at the truck...just because. The police drove up and we explained what had gone on. The kid was from the neighborhood. The policeman asked if my son wanted to press charges to which my son said, "No, but if anything ever happens again I will." The policeman gave the kid a long speech about how lucky he was that my son wasn't pressing charges, etc., and then drove the kid home to talk with his parents. I was just certain that the next day the kid would be back, with his parents, to apologize again. That never happened. Chris Brown blaming the domestic violence in his childhood for beating up his girlfriend. Lots of people experienced parents fighting and hurting each other and they didn't grow up to be abusive. He, and he alone, made the decision to hit his girlfriend and needs to take responsibility for it. Man up, as they say. Michael Vick blamed his growing up in a small town in a poor neighborhood for not knowing that fighting and abusing dogs was wrong. Give me a break! He is a grown man living in the United States, not under a rock somewhere. He, and he alone, decided he could make a lot of money by running his dog fighting ring and killing the dogs that were no longer useful to him. He should have to spend the rest of his life working for free in animal shelters....under close supervision. Some of the most notorious child abusers and molesters blame the fact that they themselves were abused or molested as children and therefore couldn't help themselves. Again, they made the choice to continue the cycle. Personally, I think we should take all these people and drop them off on an island in the middle of a piranha-filled ocean to fend for themselves. Parents of children who drown in family swimming pools always blame someone or something else, whether they thought someone else was watching them, the phone rang, someone else left the gate open, something is wrong with the lock on the door, etc. In this case, I believe the thought of them being responsible for their child's death is probably just too much to bear, so the excuses may buffer the pain a little. Take responsibility for your carelessness and get involved in public awareness. Whew! I'm pushing so many of my hot buttons this morning, I'm exhausted. I better go take responsibility for the messiness of my house Today's challenge: Take responsibility for every action and every choice you make today.