A note or two on personal responsibility

"I did it. It was my fault, and I accept what I have done." I woke up this morning and realized that it has been awhile since I heard those words spill forth from anyone's mouth, and I was left feeling kinda appalled. I mean the idea of passing the buck, while uniquely American, is killing interpersonal relationship in our day to day lives. I'm a fairly optimistic kid, but if I cannot trust my neighbor to be responsible for his/her actions than I cannot really trust them.

I'm too lazy right now to make the right sort of moves to cache this out (it's my blog damn it, I'll do what I want), but to think about for yourself I would start with responsibilty and use it as a necessarry component for trust, for then you can make the claim that those who are most adept at passing the buck are in some very important ways liars, if not to others, then of course to themselves (this is called rationalization, you know, that thing you use when you accept a drink from that increasingly attractive friend who 2 hours ago was not only unappealing, but to you a totally worthless human being -- you drinkers know what I'm talking about). And I don't know, I think that we should be able to expect those around us to at least be aware enough to know themselves enough to know their role in both their lives and ours, and admit when they are negatively impacting either or both.

As harsh as this sounds, well, it is. There is a limit to acceptance, and I used to be very good at it. So good in fact that I managed to accept the fact that I was doing 8-balls of blow until noon the next day all while doing nothing different than I had been doing without it. I accepted certain people (who shall remain nameless, though I hope you know who you are) on the basis of my visceral reaction to them; these things include physical attraction, compatible drug use, a major similar to but not quite mine (you know, the geek at heart needs a fix too) and so on. This is not to say that I abhor my existance, for I have found many greatly rewarding things along the way: friends, experiences, places. What I will say is that this has been more of a function of dumb luck than anything else: when you burn the candle at both ends of course you will find at least enough of what you neeed in order to keep going.

I guess what I mean from all this is that you, I, he, it over there, we are not a collection of activites and Esquire (or Vanity Fair) articles, are not the poor relationship with your father, are not the time you woke up in ditch next to someone, the time you did the whole vial & put yourself into a K-hole: these are just things, they are not you. Take some fucking responsibility to find out who you are, whether you like what you find or not, and behave according to that: I would argue that behaving otherwise is just a front, and when the truth of your existance slaps you in the face, it will do so with much more force 5 years from now than right now.