Musings on Responsibility & Response-Ability

Responsibility. We are constantly reminded to take responsibility for everything. Someone is always responsible for something, often to the point that the masses are sent on a hunt for scapegoats. We learn about projections and causalities that don't often mean a whole lot but are somehow alleged to instill responsibility in us.

"Eat your food because children in Africa are dying!"

"It was his fault, not mine."

"Take some damn responsibility for yourself!"

I have often wondered what exactly responsibility means. Since the time I was a kid I have tried to uncover what exactly hides behind that word that seems so popular in the way we manage society today and the more I grew up the more I found nobody really knows.

For starters, it has this massive aura of causality, this looming alleged meaning of someone being the cause for something, as if there weren't any causes before that... something I really want to question fundamentally in another article one day, the whole concept of causality and its (absent) solidity.

For now though I want to share this other meaning of responsibility I have come across that I find way more instructional and self-empowering than the reference to abiding by rules, laid out by other people for whatever senseless reasons we are to follow blindly.

You see, responsibility is one of those words that actually tells us what it means without much need for any additional or exterior explanation. I think we may overlook it because we have gotten so used to using words a certain way without actually noticing what we are saying.

If you were to just hear the word and not read it the meaning kinda jumps out at you. It simply means your response-ability. Your ability to respond. But respond to what?

Some hippies would say your response to what is going on. That's about as concrete as I can make it in language. If we are to use some rusty old linguistic models and images it may mean your ability, willingness and WAY of responding to the situations that pop up in your life.

A certain level of maturity will allow you to respond a different way than someone could who would not have learned lesson XYZ yet. Sometimes this can mean that a new similar situation, challenge, test, or circumstance presents itself like it has in your past only that NOW you may be able to give a different response.

Or to put it even more bluntly - to give a different response to the cosmos. To the universe. To the ground of being. Whatever you want to call it. Some simply call it life.

In your actions, and your inactions, your "choices" and your determinations you constantly respond to what is. All the time.

If you think the universe to be a mirror of you than you are the mirror of the universe. These distinctions don't really exist factually, but in the human game and realm - in our roles we are playing here - they certainly make a great effort to prove their existence to us constantly. One side of the coin always implies the other (though it is always one coin, not two sides).

So, responsibility... Next time you find yourself in a situation that seems familiar, a challenge that has presented itself to you before, or a set of circumstances that puts you on the cosmic spot so to speak... what will your answer be?

We constantly respond, all the time every day, to everything.

If you take the image that we are all the universe itself, and are all playing with one another with great skill, forgetting that we are essentially and sourcefully the same "thing" - how will your act differ this time? What can you show "the others" (your Self) through your deeds, through your responses to what life throws your way?

Your response and your response-ability will make the whole game worth the effort and to me thinking about responsibility in this way has opened a lot of doors that are less hung-up on rules made by other human beings that came before us for their own agendas.

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