Blame and Responsibility: So Close yet So Far

We have all played THE BLAME GAME at one point or the other. Some still play it on a daily basis.

As a science student/daughter of a building engineer turned Pastor, taking Further Mathematics was not bargainable, not that I didn’t like it.

My first teacher was Mr Ogunsola, God bless his soul. His enthusiasm for teaching mixed with my ability did awesome things to my grades. After a year, for reasons beyond my comprehension, they changed our Further Math’s teacher to Mrs Whose Name I Don’t Remember. It was terrible, she taught like she was being forced. Expectedly, I started to dread Further Math’s class and my grades dwindled. When I got home, and my mum saw 39 in red, she went into full scream mode (my mum has got no chill). My dad on the other hand calmly asked what changed and I said, “My teacher”. He looked me in the eye and asked, “You can’t blame your teacher for your grades, you’ve gotta take responsibility too”.

What I took from that conversation was that it wasn’t right to blame others for your circumstances so I decided to blame myself whenever something went wrong. This sent me on a downward spiral of low self-esteem and in really bad cases, depression. I was always second guessing myself and thinking I was deserving of all the shit that came my way. What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t healthy to blame yourself. I thought taking responsibility meant blaming myself until I had an epiphany of sorts.

While I admitted that the situations I found myself in were caused by either my actions or inaction, I didn’t crucify myself to the blame cross. I picked up my ass from the dirt, and made active decisions to remedy the situation, and if the situation was beyond remedy, I moved on anyways and focused on preparing for the opportunities the future intended to throw my way.

You see, “blame” is a very demoralizing word that leaves you sulking and feeling sorry for yourself. When you mess something up, admit your fault, but do not blame yourself. Admitting your part in what has happened helps you to respond appropriately to the situation without wearing myself out with the baggage of blame.

Taking blame and taking responsibility are worlds apart even though they have been ignorantly used interchangeably.
It’s okay for you to admit your fault, but what’s not okay is for you to lay blame at your feet.

Blame leaves you stuck in a whirlpool of regrets while taking responsibility leads you on a road of admittance, forgiveness, peace and progress.

I don’t know about you but I’d take the latter over the former anytime.

You messed up, yes but you’ve gotta stop beating yourself up about it. Time to stop looking back at what could have been. Cheers to the future .🍸

With Love,

Iyunadeola.