So what is it that we are responsible for? Our kids, sure, each other, sure, being responsible citizens, yes of course, the environment, as much as we can, but what if the quality and level of responsibility that we are able to take for the things outside of us, was dependent on the quality and level of responsibility that we are prepared to take for ourselves?
You see the truth is that everything we do for those around us, comes first from within us. There is no-thing that we can share or experience with another that we haven't first experienced in our relationship with ourselves. Which is why, in a nutshell, love remains such an illusive thing for so many, it’s simply due to the fact that we look for love outside of us, without first cultivating it from within.
Anyhow I digress, back to responsibility and specifically to the responsibility or lack of, that I took as a parent. You see, had I been asked at any particular point in the last 16 years, if I was a responsible parent, then I would have always said ‘yes’ and yet looking back at how I had been with myself throughout that time, I never really took true responsibility for myself.
I used exercise, food and partying as a means of avoiding feeling the tension that lived inside me, and even though most of my ‘coping mechanisms’ remained ‘out of sight’ of my child, I now understand that we all feel everything all of the time, therefore my son could, of course, feel the buried tension that I thought I was able to so cleverly hide.
Similarly when I look back at my working life, I have no doubt that I was always a ‘fairly responsible worker’. To the best of my ability I was ‘conscientious’ about the way that I worked and about how I treated others in the workplace and this is worth appreciating and yet if we are talking about responsibility, perhaps a more pertinent question would be ‘had I ever really taken responsibility for the anger that I lived with every single day’? And the simple answer to that is ‘no’.
Whilst I showed up consistently to ‘do my job’, I never considered how many workplaces I was lacing with anger. An anger that although hidden from the view of others, was actually very much present.
As a care worker I have to now question how many people did I care for with my own unresolved anger bubbling away under the surface?
What I have come to realise is that even though my anger didn’t make it to the surface very often, that’s neither here nor there because everything is in fact energy, so even though people couldn’t see my anger, they were certainly able to feel it.
Have we not all walked into a room where people are getting on with their business and yet been certain that there had been some kind of dispute or drama? What this tells us, is that there is no such thing as physical boundaries. Any movement, word, thought or emotion is an energy, therefore cannot be contained within our bodies, it is simply not possible to keep our emotions ‘inside’, even if they are never openly expressed.
What becomes crystal clear from this understanding is that we each have a responsibility to be super aware of what is happening on the inside of us, all of the time, knowing that it is actually effecting everybody else constantly.
I now know that the anger that others may not have ever seen, was spilling out into my environment every day and polluting it in a way that was way more harmful than the litter that I used to pick up, thinking that I was being ‘responsible’. Perhaps I was being responsible on the surface but my reluctance to look more deeply at my inner world meant that I was also being irresponsible in so many other ways.
For the last six or so years I have started to truly take responsibility for how I feel. This responsibility has lead to a huge shift in my inner quality, which in turn has lead to an equally huge shift in the quality of my relationships with others, as well as the quality of life in general.
I am now left pondering if responsibility is something that we have misunderstood. We have placed so much importance on being responsible for things outside of us, without first considering the quality of our own being. But is this an innocent mistake?
Do we in fact busy ourselves taking care of everything that is around us, simply to avoid taking responsibility for the only thing that can truly lead to the true care of everything else and that is, ourselves?
If all the tragedies and calamities that we see in the world are simply a magnification of the tragedies and calamities that we have stored within, then the only way to ‘put the world to rights’ would be to ‘put ourselves right’ first.
Anyhow I digress, back to responsibility and specifically to the responsibility or lack of, that I took as a parent. You see, had I been asked at any particular point in the last 16 years, if I was a responsible parent, then I would have always said ‘yes’ and yet looking back at how I had been with myself throughout that time, I never really took true responsibility for myself.
I used exercise, food and partying as a means of avoiding feeling the tension that lived inside me, and even though most of my ‘coping mechanisms’ remained ‘out of sight’ of my child, I now understand that we all feel everything all of the time, therefore my son could, of course, feel the buried tension that I thought I was able to so cleverly hide.
Similarly when I look back at my working life, I have no doubt that I was always a ‘fairly responsible worker’. To the best of my ability I was ‘conscientious’ about the way that I worked and about how I treated others in the workplace and this is worth appreciating and yet if we are talking about responsibility, perhaps a more pertinent question would be ‘had I ever really taken responsibility for the anger that I lived with every single day’? And the simple answer to that is ‘no’.
Whilst I showed up consistently to ‘do my job’, I never considered how many workplaces I was lacing with anger. An anger that although hidden from the view of others, was actually very much present.
As a care worker I have to now question how many people did I care for with my own unresolved anger bubbling away under the surface?
What I have come to realise is that even though my anger didn’t make it to the surface very often, that’s neither here nor there because everything is in fact energy, so even though people couldn’t see my anger, they were certainly able to feel it.
Have we not all walked into a room where people are getting on with their business and yet been certain that there had been some kind of dispute or drama? What this tells us, is that there is no such thing as physical boundaries. Any movement, word, thought or emotion is an energy, therefore cannot be contained within our bodies, it is simply not possible to keep our emotions ‘inside’, even if they are never openly expressed.
What becomes crystal clear from this understanding is that we each have a responsibility to be super aware of what is happening on the inside of us, all of the time, knowing that it is actually effecting everybody else constantly.
I now know that the anger that others may not have ever seen, was spilling out into my environment every day and polluting it in a way that was way more harmful than the litter that I used to pick up, thinking that I was being ‘responsible’. Perhaps I was being responsible on the surface but my reluctance to look more deeply at my inner world meant that I was also being irresponsible in so many other ways.
For the last six or so years I have started to truly take responsibility for how I feel. This responsibility has lead to a huge shift in my inner quality, which in turn has lead to an equally huge shift in the quality of my relationships with others, as well as the quality of life in general.
I am now left pondering if responsibility is something that we have misunderstood. We have placed so much importance on being responsible for things outside of us, without first considering the quality of our own being. But is this an innocent mistake?
Do we in fact busy ourselves taking care of everything that is around us, simply to avoid taking responsibility for the only thing that can truly lead to the true care of everything else and that is, ourselves?
If all the tragedies and calamities that we see in the world are simply a magnification of the tragedies and calamities that we have stored within, then the only way to ‘put the world to rights’ would be to ‘put ourselves right’ first.