Responsibility

Responsibility has been much on my mind of late.

Why?  It weighs heavily on me, in both my personal and professional life.  I am told that I am responsible for a great many things, yet somehow that responsibility neither empowers me to act nor results in the rewards of being being responsible.   It sometimes seems that responsibility is merely a word for shifting the burden of action and decision.

What is responsibility? 

Responsibility:  The quality or state of being responsible, as:  moral, legal or mental accountability; something for which one is responsible:  burden.

Accountability.  That's a word I'm certainly familiar with in my professional life.  It is a word that people love to seemingly hold above one's head.  "You're accountable for this"  they say, often almost seeming to take a perverse amount of joy in making the pronouncement, then leaving without any further assistance or suggestion.

Burden.  I had not anticipated that word being there but that is too often what responsibility feels like: a burden, something which must be borne in the face of daily living.

But is this what responsibility was meant to convey?

Responsibility with only accountability is not, I think, the entire story.  Practiced this way, it truly is a burden, something which must be carried endlessly.  The missing bookends are choice and reward.

Choice:  In being responsible, I am taking accountability for something that is the result of a choice.  Too often it is a choice I have not made and not been involved in.  To be truly accountable, I need to be involved in the initial choice that lead to that accountability.

Reward:  One holds one's responsibilities and is accountable because, in the end, one  has the hope of some reward, be it financial or physical or "Well done, Good and Faithful Servant".  The hope of reward may not even be something as definitive as that; it may only be the hope of victory or a better tomorrow.  In any case, there is the suggestion that there is a end and a treasure for the discharge of the accountability.

But notice that of the three steps - Choice, Responsibility, Reward - too often many people want to be involved in the first and last step but not the middle.

Charting a course?  Deciding on a goal?  That's important stuff. Of course people want to be involved.  It's exciting.  It's fun.  It's future.  And Reward?  Who doesn't want a reward?  Who won't show up for a party?

But that long center climb - accountability - ah, there's the rub.  That's work.  That's unrecognized work, more often than not.  It's thankless.  If you fail, the hyenas of any social group will be there to tear and mock.  If you succeed, well, that's just what you were supposed to do.  Carry on.

I suppose what I'm suggesting is a revolution - at least, a revolution in my own life.  A change - not only in how I perceive and understand responsibility, but how I practice it.and allow it to be practiced on me.  Perhaps by redefining the difference between a responsibility (choice, accountability, reward) and an accountability (something given to me with no choice before and no reward after).   

One, if practiced properly, leads to maturity, success and personal growth.  The other seems to lead only to hopelessness and despair.