This time it's personal

I know that I started this littleblog with a couple of posts on personal responsibility. I still agree with what I said, whole heartedly in fact, so much so that today we will be talking about consequences. I'm not sure, but from what I have seen both in my life and the lives of those around me that there is a whole lot of personal responsibility shirking going on. More specifically, I have reached the point today that the amount of complaining going on, whether it is an existential crisis about where someone is in their life, whether making a pass at the wrong person, whether or not a friend is going down the wrong path...All of these are just a way to excuse responsibility for one's actions.

In fact, I have thought about this and have come to the conclusion that there is no valid reason to ever bitch about anything that does not go the way that one wants it to. I know that there is a touch of hyprocracy here, if due to no other reason than the ostensible fact that I am complaining about the amount of complaining, but I am alright with myself on this. The greater cause here is that I will hear no more complaining about something other than the loss of life or liberty.

On angle is the free will v. determinism debate. If our lives are deterministic, then really no one has a reason to bitch at all, because what we have done we have done, what we will do we will do, and nothing will be able to change the course of events. Thus, shut up. If we do have free will, then the question is begged slightly more, but not in any real way.

Granted we are unable to see all the consequences that our actions may have. Here I speak of forseeable consequences as in: if I write my cover letter this way I will not get the job, if I send this message someone will take it this way and so on. I am not thinking of things along the line of the butterfly effect. If we have lived to be old enough to read this and understand the point I argue that we have come far enough to stop for a second and think about our next move. It goes something like this: as of late I have a run of fairly bad luck: getting fired from a job for a reason that I do not see as real among other things. Now there could have been a number of factors that could have prevented this, among them the fact that any one of my fellow employees could have call and let me know I was missing the meeting that would signal my doom, my boss could have called and asked for the reason (he did leave a message, but he didn't actually call me to fire me) and so on. The bald fact is that what happened did, and even though I could have changed things or any of the aforementioned other things could have happened, but the overwhelming idea is that none of them actually did so I actually have no reason to bitch. I did, and I sit slightly unhappy that I wasted precious seconds complaining about something I could not change, rather than attempting to find a solution that would make my life and the situation better.

The last phrase in bold I cannot stress enough. For complaining, and stewing, and not moving on leads not only to pining for a better time (anyone that knows me can think of at least one example), but it also takes you from the stream of life and thus removes you from the doors that open with any change in the routine that makes up one's life.

I know that we all complain, it is a natural product of a domesticaed life and the illusion of self. My call is to fight it. If you have a problem, then you better let it out, or let it go, but there is always a resolution to be had, or at least the first steps to resolution. So if you outright can't let it go, then move along: there is already life passing you by. With that I gotta get going, this complaining is driving me insane.