Some Random (and Humorous?) Thoughts on Personal Responsibility and Accountability

I’m a big believer in personal responsibility and accountability. While I have no problem with acknowledging how circumstances and other factors may have contributed to a particular situation or outcome in which I find myself, I realize that in the vast majority of cases I am ultimately responsible for where and how I find myself. From a pragmatic standpoint, it makes a lot more sense to focus on the things that I did and/or didn’t do. After all, I typically had control over those actions and decisions and if I want to change the situation or outcome I usually need to take action or respond differently in the future. My life and myself are largely the product of my actions and my decisions, regardless of outside circumstances and factors.

With that being said, it isn’t always easy to have the blame assigned to you. That is particularly true when it probably wasn’t really your fault. My brothers and I were recently laughing about how our father had absolutely no problem with assigning blame to us if something went poorly or if something bad or inconvenient happened. I once refused to drive my dad’s Corvette simply because I knew that if something happened and his car was damaged, I would never hear the end of it. And I wasn’t being entirely unreasonable, as he once gave me a hard time for getting rear-ended by another driver in which I was not cited or found to be at fault.

I have no doubt that the man could have turned news of an almost any personal misfortune or disaster and pinned at least some of the blame on me. I could have been ass-raped by an escaped orangutan high on methamphetamines and synthetic testosterone and my dad would have found a way to blame me for it happening or suggested that my behavior was at least partially responsible.

“Well, you were probably trying to feed it bananas so that you could pet it.” 😂🦧🍌