There goes a seemingly manic overachiever on YouTube, or TikTok, telling you that you're responsible for manifesting every aspect of your life.
Their eyes glazed with dopamine, their gaze like the person at the bus stop or train station that you feel compelled to avoid.
'YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO YOU' they shout.
The thing is, they're at least directionally right, while being just a little to the left of the practical advice bullseye.
Why You're Response-Able For Everything That Happens To You, Even If You're Not To Blame
Instead of saying you should be responsible for every experience you have, I think we should phrase it as "response-able."
Granted, it sounds fucking stupid. But it's a little bit of word-magic, and it works.
While I generally believe the Buddhist concept of kamma is a real thing, it doesn't necessarily mean you wanted misfortune to fall at your feet.
Most of us don't.
In fact, as Guy Armstrong points out in his book, ‘Emptiness’, the Buddha said kamma (karma) is only one source of pain your life, and that other factors, like “illness, diet, climate, accidents, and assault” all play their own roles in bringing us pain, and aren’t necessarily tied to past action.
We didn't ask for traumatic lives, but it's what each block of 365 days handed out to us.
I'm not here to tell you that victims of the worst crimes were to blame for what happened, I'm here to provide you with a reframe that gives power back to you, and any of those aforementioned victims.
To be response-able is to be capable of responding. In our society, to be responsible often means you're *the* cause. With the former, you're *a* cause for change in whatever situation you find yourself in.
It doesn't mean you're guaranteed to get what you want, but it does mean you can be empowered in the moment, regardless of outside factors.
Let's talk about how to use this in a practical way.
The Ways You Can Be Response-Able
There's two ways of responding: physical action, and mental action.
One way of figuring out which action would be the best way to handle what you're currently facing is a mental action: Asking yourself 'What Would Need To Be True For Me To Have The Worst Response To This' -- and then do the opposite of each.
There's so many situations in life you can stand to be response-able for, so it's difficult to give specific prescriptions for unique events, but the what would need to be true question above can help you use inversion to reverse-engineer a proper response.
Another mental action is to choose a new way to be. A new way for the world to occur to you. I recommend this post for more on that.
How To Be Response-Able For The Worst Things That Have Happened To You
It's easy to fall into a blame game mindstate.
Regrets are one of the prices of admission in this thing called life, but there are healthier ways of responding.
Looking at the bad events that have happened to you and evaluating where you could have responded differently so you can respond differently in the future, is one of the more positive approaches.
Ex: If you were attacked on the street, an empowering way to be response-able is to enroll in a self-defense class, so you can build skills that you may lack at the moment. This is an example of focusing on what you can actually control.
Ex: You grew up in an alcoholic home and have trauma from the conflicts that you witnessed as a child. You can choose to withdraw, or drown your own sorrows in alcohol, or you can choose more empowering responses: seeking therapy, seeking books about therapy/DBT/CBT, creating a healthier diet for yourself so you're less prone to things like anxiety and depression, etc.
I admit, this is slippery territory where you have to ensure that you don't dip your feet into the self-blame waters. You can choose a more helpful response than that.
You're not responsible for every event that happens to you, but you do have the power to be response-able when it comes to how you experience those events.
Dr. BJ Miller (a man whose story exemplifies this sort of thing) once said "We humans have this ability to change our perspective. Much more than we can change the material world, we can change how we see the material world. Taking on that power was the key."
For many negative things that happen to us, we can't turn back the clock.
We can't un-regret ourselves, we have to sit with those regrets, and pains, and digest the emotions.
But like Dr. Miller mentions, one response we have with situations like that is changing our perspective. Being a sigil, or an alternative possibility that can be healthier for us to invoke instead of guilt.
And when we actually did do something that contributed to a situation directly, we can have the self-compassion and empathy to approach it in a 'I could have responded (in ____ way), and I'll try to keep that in mind for the next time something like this happens', instead of unconsciously running ourselves through past events that are merely malicious ghosts, detached from the present.
Wrapping It Up
Even if we live in a "block universe" where the past, present, and future exist hand-in-hand, we experience life through successive snapshots called the present.
As far as most of us can tell given our human limitations, we didn't choose our natal chart, or our parents, or all of our opponents, but we can (seemingly) choose how to respond to all of those things.
The next time you encounter a mistake, or just a bad memory, I hope that you're able to acknowledge it, be with it, and then choose a response that leads you to greater wisdom instead of greater pain.