More About Choice - And Responsibility

The wonderful thing about choice is that everyone has the ability to choose for themselves. The problem with choice is that everyone has the ability to choose for themselves, and they never seem to choose what I want!

Choice is an awesome power. By choice the Panama Canal came into being. By choice we have electric lights, computers, and all the wonders of technology. All of our modern conveniences (and even the modern inconveniences) came about because some chose to create them.

We all have the power to choose. Where we run into problems is when we try to control the consequence of our choices. Every choice has a consequence. Every intention has an outcome. Every action has a reaction. This is true in all aspects of life - not just Newton's laws of physics.

Imagine if you will a group of teenagers sitting around a campfire. I choose teenagers because I once was one, and I had an experience very close to this example. One teenager turns to the next and says, "I dare you to run through the campfire! If you are fast enough, you won't get burned!" The recipient of the dare now has a choice.

He can choose to accept the dare and run through the campfire or he can choose to ignore the taunt and stay seated. Here is the rub: once the choice is made, the consequences are out of the hands of the one making the choice. If he decides to run through the campfire and it doesn't go as planned, he has no choice about whether or not he gets burned.

If, however, he decides to stay seated, he has no choice as to whether or not his friends make fun of him and call him a coward.

Such is the nature of choice. But what about the choices of others that affect us, for good or ill? Why should we have to deal with the consequences, even though it wasn't our choice? If someone runs through a red light and hits my car in the intersection, I still have to deal with it, even if it wasn't my choice that caused the accident!

In order to understand how to deal with such inevitable events, we have to turn our attention to blame and responsibility. Many people think that these two words mean the same thing - but they do not. In fact, they are, from a certain point of view, exact opposites.

In the movie Dirty Dancing, Baby, the lead character, and her family are spending their summer vacation at a resort that provides activities, entertainment, and more. One of the entertainments is a dance show followed by dance instruction. The two star dancers of the show are Penny and Johnny.

Baby begins to spend time with the dancers and befriends Johnny. One night, when she goes to the cabins where the staff lives (which is off limits) she finds Penny in a dreadful state. Penny has gone to a clandestine abortion clinic and the results have left her in agony.

Baby runs to get the assistance of her father, who is a physician. He, of course, comes to the rescue. He spends considerable time with Penny while Johnny, Baby and others wait nervously outside. When the father comes out of Penny's room he asks who is responsible for Penny. Johnny accepts that responsibility.

The father assumes that Johnny was the father of the baby and forbids his daughter, Baby, to have anything to do with him. Later it is discovered that one of the waiters of the resort, a man whom the father thought was a young man on the path to great success, is the real father.

Here is where everything became confused. The father was looking to blame - he was looking in the past to identify the culprit. Johnny however, was accepting the responsibility for caring for his friend, Penny. He was looking forward to the future and focused on how to fix the problem, not find the culprit for it.

He could have easily said that the waiter was responsible, but he knew the waiter wasn't a responsible person. He didn't take responsibility for the pregnancy in the first place, he certainly wouldn't take responsibility for the cost of the doctor's services!

Responsibility comes from the word response. It is a word of action. When we take responsibility for our lives and the events that arise, we are not necessarily taking blame. We are taking action.

Now, the hope is that whomever is to blame will also take responsibility and fix the problem. But what if they don't? What if there is no one to blame? What then?

Over the last few decades, for some reason, society has avoided taking responsibility for everything around us, from economics to seat belts. And the reason is clear. Too many people are like Baby's father. They confuse responsibility with blame.

We can stand up and take responsibility because we choose to do so. We can respond to those situations in life - those consequences - that are not our fault and find a solution. If we wait for others - those we would blame - to take responsibility, we will wait for a very long time.