The blame game

#15/100

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, it will not change you.

-Wayne Dyer

Do you have a person in your life who you hold accountable for all your troubles? I’m not talking about finding a scapegoat to pin all your worries on. This person might have actually caused a huge hindrance in your life. Your life would have panned out differently without the involvement of this person. It could be a toxic friend, sibling or parent. Someone who is a big part of your life yet a hindrance to your growth.

What do we do with such people? How should we ignore their negative energy in our life? Mind you this is a person you care about the most and can’t disassociate yourself with. Yet their insecurities, fears, selfishness, lack of knowledge casts a shadow on your life. You feel like you are are stuck in a rut and desperately seek a way out. Since this person couldn’t take responsibility of their life along with the ones dependent on them, you rose to the occasion. But this person would never accept their in-capabilities or acknowledge your efforts in setting things on the right path.

Now that you’ve been handling these responsibilities for a while, you feel lost in this journey of life. You do not understand the reason for your existence. You feel like you’ve given up a lot of your time for other people in your life and cannot identify with yourself anymore. The responsibilities that drove you earlier and gave you a purpose have transformed into a burden. You gave up the crucial days of your life trying to set things right for your family and ended up without experiencing the carelessness and freedom enjoyed by a teenager. Now that you are an adult and are ‘expected‘ to take care of everything, you want your childhood back, your innocence back, you feel like taking a backseat.

There’s a turmoil in your mind and you take it all out on the person who was supposed to make you feel safe, be there for you, shield you from troubles and guide you. But they didn’t do any of it. Is it right to keep accusing the person for your troubled past, burdened present and blurry future? Can we allow another person’s inadequacies to control our life’s decisions?

I’m a big admirer of Oprah Winfrey and absolutely look up to her for motivation and guidance. She had a troubled childhood too, yet she didn’t let that define her destiny. With everything that went wrong in her life, she discovered her purpose and aligned her life’s choices with it. Despite all the accolades, fame and fortune earned by her, I respect her for being happy with her life. Everything else is superficial if it can’t give you peace and happiness. One of her famous sayings goes like :-

“You are responsible for your life.”

It’s a simple and profound thought yet extremely difficult to implement. Especially when you have dealt with many situations in life which you weren’t responsible for and were beyond your control. But these situations are a matter of the past now. Your reactions to these situations determines your present and future.

I have to accept this harsh reality. I would be able to see the silver lining and maybe change my life for the better once I own my life in it’s entirety. I’m clueless on how to begin the process of doing what it takes to take the reins of my happiness. I might stumble and fall along the way but hope to be persistent on this pursuit of being responsible for my life.