RESPONSIBILTY versus Response-Ability
RESPONSIBILITY.
Most of us hate this word. It could well have been included in George Carlin’s 7 Words You Can’t Say On TV.
Duties, bills, taking care of unpleasant business, doing things we don’t want to do. We have saddled that word with every antagonistic thought we ever had about being “grown-up” and added a sprinkling of blame in there too. “You’re responsible for this, you screwed up, the buck stops with you!” The word implies fault, the burden of obligation, indictment and, well, responsibility.
Is it any wonder we avoid the most important responsibility of all? It’s not the “responsibility” of being organised, or re-cycling plastics and glass, it’s responsibility for our own emotions. When we do not take responsibility for the emotions we experience, our choice-making ability suffers because we cannot respond to the world around us as options/opportunities. Instead we respond by reacting to a world we have no “control” over and thus we keep doing (and experiencing) the same things over and over again. If the outside world is telling us how to feel about ourselves, then we’re consciously or unconsciously giving someone or something outside ourselves responsibility for our feelings.
In our cause-and-effect world we instinctively assign emotional blame both on ourselves and others, “You crticised me – and that made me feel really bad about myself, what you said really upset me.” or, “I feel really bad about upsetting you and creating this big conflict.” but the truth is that nobody causes ANYONE else to feel anything.
We can read every self-help book ever written, see every healer, clergy or guru and intellectually understand the principles of loving ourselves and others but until we take ownership and responsibility for our emotions/selves, we will be stuck in an analytical paralysis of thinking, understanding, and observing instead of doing, engaging and BE-ing.
When we’re asked to be responsible for our emotions it often goes something like this,
“It’s not my FAULT that I feel what I feel… it’s not my burden of obligation that my husband hurt my feelings. I understand that the feelings are MY feelings… but I’m not the one that started them. I didn’t ask for this.”
or
“I don’t know what it means to take responsibility for my feelings… I feel them, I’m mad and sad… what more can I do? What’s my burden of obligation here? I’m not in control of what happens to me.”
It might help to think of responsibility as “response-ability” instead of as blame, fault or a jurisdiction of duties and tasks; it’s simply the ability to integrate with your emotions, claim your own feelings and RESPOND to the outside forces around you and to the emotions that arise. There is an important distinction here, because most of us think that “responsibility” means that we need to make sure we take care of, avoid or JUDGE our own emotional reactions. (They’re my responsibility and responsibility means CONTROL. I need to make sure I’m not sad, mad or frightened.) This creates more internal conflict than it solves because instead we are setting up another layer of distance between ourselves and our feelings. And, of course, that’s what making other people responsible for our feelings accomplishes too.
Think about something you KNOW you can be response-able about. Let’s take your shoes. As you read the next part, think about how feelings are like SHOES in this example:
You know you have shoes, you wear them every day! You would never look at your feet in your shoes and say, “my stupid boss is wearing my shoes.” instead, you know that they are an extension of you and that you make choices about them, you know that your shoes are there to help you move through life. You would not judge your shoes in such a way that extended to you as a Being, “I hate these shoes, they’re so horrible. I’m a terrible, awful person to have these shoes!” If you found a hole in your shoes, or found that you had outgrown your shoes and couldn’t wear them anymore, you would not say, “I NEED to hold on to these shoes even though my heel and toes are hanging over the edges and the sole is all broken down, because I’m worthless.” Of course not! You wouldn’t pretend that your broken shoes didn’t exist or hide them under your bed or try to cover them up by wearing galoshes and you wouldn’t wait for someone to just offer you a new pair. No, you would be able to respond to your painful shoes and change them to make them fit better, look more stylish or dye them to match the chartreuse dress in your sister’s wedding. You don’t try to give your shoes to someone else and then wonder why your feet are all dusty and muddy. You would never look at your shoes and say, “Oh I wish someone would give me my shoes. If I only had shoes.. then I’d be able to get up and walk.” You wouldn’t wait for your shoes to leap on your feet in the morning spontaneously. You would not try to control your shoes if they were sitting on a shoe rack and not on your feet and you would not try to control anyone else’s shoes if they were already on someone else’s feet! Finally, you know you HAVE shoes, but you also know that you ARE NOT YOUR SHOES!
© Brilliance In Sight/Willow 2010
If I only had a…
Most of us think that we’d only be happy if we had a… (nose job, million dollars, Roberto Cavalli shoes, a boyfriend’s love, the right job…)
In reality, our happiness doesn’t depend on things and people. Check out this great article a friend of mine wrote on her blog about our occupation with “stuff” and “goals” and happiness . (While you’re there check out some other articles!).
We’d all do a lot better if we disconnected the “stuff” we want from the happiness that we can feel from within. If you have a few minutes extra, check out this interesting video by social psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Dan Gilbert. He talks about the source of our feelings of happiness and relative value:
Conscious Complaint: Kvetching in the New Age
Bitching and moaning, complaining, venting. Virtually everyone does it, and in some circles (at work, in a coffee klatch, a group of girlfriends, drinks after work on Friday) it’s encouraged and accepted as a way to bond. Complaining about how much things cost, the weather, how your latest health crisis has sapped your resources, and what a bristle-headed toady your boss REALLY is, is water-cooler fodder the world over. What’s wrong with letting off a little steam?
(photo: David/Daviddb cc-by-sa-2.0 license; wikimedia)
The problem is, that complaining is seen as a “negative” expression of victim consciousness, a bring-down and an affirmation of “can’t” thinking that just reinforce the negative scripting we have about ourselves and other people. Especially in a New-Age conscious society, complaint is seen as an undesirable assault on ‘The Secret’ Law of Attraction/Positive Thinking. In fact, there are even groups who promote a “Complaint Free World” and many people are jumping on the bandwagon.
It’s not just the new-age, MANY of us have been trained since childhood to not complain, to not make a fuss. All this consciousness makes a good bitch-fest a guilty indulgence or worse, a sense of personal failing when we can’t reach Zen-like states of equipoise. One of the greatest myths about “positive” thought is that the goal is to be marching through life in a constant state of exuberant happiness, joy, grace and calm.
Happiness in life is NOT a blissed out state of Zen 24-hours a day, it’s not doing jumping jacks of glee or feeling pumped up on joyous endorphins all the time. The goal (if there is one) is closer to the ability to experience all of your emotions, happiness, sadness, fear, anger, without JUDGMENT, allowing yourself to feel whatever you feel with a peacefulness that underlies all of your possible reactions. If you can actually feel your own feelings and not get stuck in the judgment, repression or reaction to them, you can connect to YOURSELF and you can link your mind and choices to the next step instead of just to the complaint.
If you’re being blissful because you want to impress your spiritual friends with your calm or because you think you’re doing the right thing for the Law of Attraction, you might just be secretly AVOIDING the validity of your feelings by repressing them:
“Oh fudge-cake! I just dropped an anvil on my foot! Oh blessings! I’m grateful to have feet.”
Come on now, be honest! If we try to shoehorn ourselves into GRATITUDE, our legitimate feelings might feel repressed somewhere down the line and resurface later in a bigger, nastier compliant.
A conscious complaint moves from Fact to Grace without letting projections, judgments and cover-ups destroying your ability to then ACT or resolve the issue. ( When fact and feelings leave off, negative Ego fills in the blanks. )
Start with the fact and the honest experience of emotion: “OUCH!!!! That really hurt. I didn’t like that anvil falling on me at all. I’m going to have a good cry!” it’s only then, when you admit and experience your actual feeling that you can move to your own nurturing solutions and actions; “I’m going to take good care of my foot while it heals and learn from that experience. Note to self: Don’t dangle Anvil out of second story-window!” Gratitude is wonderful, but it’s distance from the wounded Ego that allows you to experience it legitimately. “I’m glad I didn’t lose my foot! In fact… I’m really happy that my feet have done so many nice things for me over the years. Even after those prom shoes that were 2 sizes too small.”
An unconscious complaint is complaint for the sake of complaint. Ego takes over where feelings have been abandoned or where facts leave off; “DAMN IT! An Anvil fell on me… of COURSE. This always happens to me. Nothing good ever happens. I mean AN ANVIL FELL ON ME!!!!! Who does that happen to? Nobody but the Road-Runner. And me. Because I suck, because the world is unfair, and because everything around me is pure sh*t.”
Notice how there are more negative projections and more assumptions, dark stories and suppositions in that complaint above than there are actual FEELINGS from the present moment?
NOT complaining and holding on to your gripes, may be another way of holding on to your emotions and not letting them be felt. But make no mistake about it though, you can’t stop with “Feelings” even authentically felt ones. The therapeutic benefit to venting is to blow off steam so that you can keep moving forward and having new emotional and real-life experiences.
(c) Brilliance in Sight/Willow 2010
