RESPONSIBILITY. What does it mean?
I'm continually learning the meaning of "responsibility".
It's been a quest, in a sense - a pledging to explore in a deeper way what it means to be responsible in my own life.
So far in this quest, I've learned that until somewhere into my thirties, I had misunderstood it.
Up to this point, I believed responsibility meant to behave in a manner most accepted by society. This operational definition was caught up in what I thought responsibility should "look like". I had been responsible if I had done my work well, received good grades, did the dishes, kept the laundry moving, fed people, cared for people; kept the house neat, clean, and orderly; provided emotional, monetary, and physical support to meet the needs of my family; volunteered in the community, etc. It contained a boat load of “shoulds” and outward action. That boat was heavy and I felt as if I was slowly drowning within it.
Responsibility was heavy stuff!
Yet, I thought I was doing it right, since according to Merriam-Webster:
The Definition of Responsibility is:
the quality or state of being responsible: such as
a: moral, legal, or mental accountability
something for which one is responsible: a burden
As in “he has neglected his responsibilities”
According to the dictionary’s definition, I had been fairly responsible.. I had been doing it mostly right.
So why as I aged and put more experiences behind me, did this definition wear me down, drag me under and left me feeling vacant and my life feeling vapid.
As I started taking into account some important core truths of myself that had been left by the wayside in striving to fulfill an obligation to "be responsible". I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable in the manner in which I was approaching life. Something vitally important to LIVING had been left out in leaving it with Merriam-Webster.
Did I really understand the word itself? Was I living true to a cultural sense that was partially true but spiritually bankrupt? When sitting with this question, I began to feel a great chasm opening within.
And so began my practice of working to understand responsibility in a much larger framework. I started to expand responsibility to include the deep callings from within. I began to question how well my actions aligned with these inner “callings”. What did it mean to listen to the calling of a spiritual responsibility and what would it mean to respond to these callings?
The answer showed up on my doorstep one Winter’s day. A beautiful gift in the form of a book from my oldest daughter to her younger sister. It was a book about “truly growing up” and clearly articulated what it would mean to take “responsibility" into deeper places and into its truer meaning.
“In its truest and most literal sense, responsibility is simply the capacity to respond. Being responsible is an inherently lively quality. It is the capacity to react completely and freely to conditions. Being responsible has nothing to do with control and conformity. Quite the contrary, responsibility is the willingness to confront nakedly and clearly what’s in front of you on its own terms and to be called forth fresh by what occurs. The Greek root of the word response means to offer, to pledge. To be responsible is to offer yourself to what happens to you, to pledge yourself to your life.”
Now, that's a game changer.
If we take up this meaning of what it means to be responsible, life will surely evolve into something far greater in purpose and in outcome.
Pledging to live our lives in this way calls for a commitment to vulnerability, to presence, to fully showing up without a pre-planned agenda. It requires daily practice, lots of self-compassion, forgiveness when we falter, the resiliency to try again, and a certain sense of adventure - for we'll never know where "being responsible" under this definition will take us.
I'm taking it all in and practicing one day at a time and enjoying the adventure. I hope you will too.
If you need some support along the way, give me a call.
Responsibility...