Personal Responsibility - Haiti Observer Blog

According to the Holy Bible, each will have to bear his own load(Galatians 6:5). This one of the many phrases to ponder found in literature on personal responsibility.
What does responsibility really mean when deal with taking action, instead of just reading, writing, or talking about it?

Personal responsibility, as the mentioned Bible verse puts it, is the decisions and actions one takes and taking responsibility on whatever these decisions and actions will result to. It is an important human ability that helps individuals deal with any kind of circumstance or situation properly and accordingly. Not only does personal responsibility affect a single person, but also the people around him or her.

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Taking responsibility for one's own life and the decisions and actions that shape it is easy to say, but very, very difficult to do.

It takes commitment, practice, and acceptance in the long run for a better, happier, and more productive existence to accept responsibility.

So what is accepting personal responsibility? First, it is being independently responsible for the decisions and actions one takes instead of blaming them on others. "This is your fault" is an expression individuals often say to people around them when everything turns out wrong, instead of blaming it on one's self. In the end, personal choices are what shape the direction and outcome of one's life.

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The building blocks of a society are norms, laws, and most importantly a shared moral standard.

Every citizen is given a certain set of morals to follow as a matter of his or her obligation to one's self, to others, and the society he or she belongs to. Once these morals have been broken, an individual or a group will have to face the consequences dictated by society for their decisions and actions. Thus, one has to have moral responsibility.

Morality is equivalent to human existence and identity. Human beings are born and raised in the world with pre-existing cultural and societal rules that their parents, teachers, and society teach them as they get to the point of maturity when they could be responsible for themselves. Moral responsibility is thus properly exercised independently, when one could fend for himself or herself. The high or low form of it may involve several external factors such as upbringing, economic status, education, etc., but in the end, it is a matter of one's personal decisions on whether to do what he or she perceives as right or wrong based on moral standards.

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Life is what you make of it. It is the collection of the decisions and actions one makes and you take responsibility for.

A life well lived is thus a matter of having personal responsibility. It is not merely a matter of free will; it is an obligation not only to one's self, but also that of others who could be affected with one's choices and acts.

So why does it matter? Well, without personal responsibility, there is no room to grow, no room to succeed. People tend to make excuses when something goes wrong or does not go as expected, which is wrong. It is easy to point fingers, yes, but it never solves anything. Not taking the blame for one's own doing leaves one stuck in the bad situation. In order to move forward and improve, people should always be responsible for the consequences of their decisions and actions and learn from them in order to prevent these undesired outcomes from ever happening again. It also saves precious time.

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