The Missing Card

So I've been pondering the concept of self responsibility for a while now and there was something I kept getting tripped up on that I think I finally made sense of in my head. It seems like such a simple concept, You are responsible for your own actions and their outcome.

What's so difficult about that you ask? Well it's the fact that we don't just spontaneously act without cause. Every decision we make, every quirk of our personalities, is the result of the culmination of our own personal experiences in the world, but we don't experience the world alone. Our experiences are shared with, imposed on, and given to us. We each have our own perspective in the experience but others did contribute.

What had me tripped up was if the decisions we make are the result of our experiences of interactions with other people then why are these people not responsible for the result of our actions which they ultimately set in motion? This gets even more complicated when you stop to consider that these people's interactions with us were the result of their own experiences of interactions with other people who's experiences were the result of their own experiences of interactions with other people and so on. It doesn't stop. How could anyone ultimately claim responsibility for their own actions when they were the inevitable outcome of their interactions with other people who like wise can't claim responsibility for their actions as they were the inevitable outcome of their interactions and so on.

It really seems like I've over thought this doesn't it? And the thing is the conclusion I've come to in my ponderings seems so simple now that the beginning of this explanations feels utterly ridicules. My conclusion is that each person is responsible for managing their experiences, assessing what they have learned from each encounter and applying the knowledge to their next one. We have a responsibility to better ourselves with each experience.

It floors me how long I went around in circles in my head until I got to this. I think in general people like being able to say it's someone else's fault and avoid any responsibility. And can you blame someone for doing that? Responsibility is hard. It puts you center stage. You are the fall guy. However I think if everyone took responsibility for managing their own experiences, responsibility for themselves, then everyone would be working to better themselves. It wouldn't matter if you messed up because if everyone is center stage then center stage is just the stage everyone shares. All you'd do is learn from your experience and make yourself better.

Oct 5, 2 Years Later

I don't know how many people know this about me but I was arrested on this date two years ago. I'm finding it incredibly difficult to write about but I feel I need to mark this event. I thought about posting this directly to my Facebook for all my friends and family to see, and I may yet post a link to this when I'm done. In the end though, I decided on here so that I can tell myself I put it out there but still have some control of how I share it.

This event has been a defining point in my life. I feel it was almost inevitable, but what I was doing which lead to being arrested isn't as important as why I was doing it. The bottom line is I was attempting to deal with personal issues in an inappropriate manner because I was unsure how to find the appropriate help I needed. I'm making no attempt to defend or excuse myself from my actions, only to accept my responsibility for them. Over the last 2 years I've spoken with many counselors trying to find the real help I needed and eventually I did.

I wouldn't say I'm fixed, but I have been given insight into my issues. This has allowed me to approach my life differently and become much happier. That road wasn't easy though and I lost a lot on the way, arguably more then I found. There are close friends who won't speak to me now and places I can't go. I lost my best friend, though that may have happened anyways and my arrest was just a catalyst.

One thing I've kept almost completely to myself is for a long time I was suicidal. This goes back as far as my teenage years, but after my arrest it was really bad. I went so far as to have an actual plan ready to go and was just waiting for an excuse. For a while it became my habit to ask myself, 'am I doing it today?' Two things kept me going, hope of a better tomorrow and love of my family and the friends I still had. Slowly I stopped asking myself that question until finally I stopped all together.

I'm sure you've noticed I haven't said what I was arrested for and I'm not going to. The thing I've noticed about doing bad things is they tend to cling to you then when people find out about them, they begin to define you and I don't want that. I regret doing what lead to my arrest but it is something I have to live with. The only thing I can do now is learn from my mistakes and use that knowledge to become a better person.