Who Is Really To Blame?

Back when I was a young woman, the Fugees released a song entitled Doo-Wop. In the song Lauren Hill repeats this phrase four times back to back.

How you gon' win when you ain't right within

Indeed. Being right within can mean different things to different people.

So much of society is in the habit of pointing fingers right now. Look no further than the talk shows, news, and politics for confirmation of that. It's not the norm anymore to ask ourselves what our part is in whats going on around us.

If we were to ask one other if the virtue of accountability is important the answer would always be a resounding YES. Or at least I'd hope so. But are we following our own advice then? It can be easy to forget that when we point a finger away from us there are always three fingers pointing back. I believe that most of us know that having a victim mentality is a negative thing but I think that we often foster the symptoms of it without even realizing we have them. What does blame ever solve? It seems to be the fuel that our ugly side needs to continue our warpath on what has happened to us.

When I left my abuser I was obsessed with being methodical; as safe as I could make my escape. I was in survival mode. Once I was out though, cameras facing out all around me, I began to see it differently. Inside my cage of concrete and wood I struggled to keep from getting bitter. I was drawn to victim-hood though I never fell in. I read books like Gone Girl and The Woman on the Train. Strong female characters who took their power back, sometimes horribly. I took long looks in the mirror and studied everything I could get my hands on about personality disorders and narcissism. I wanted to feel sorry for my abuser. I wanted to feel sorry for him so that I could feel superior to him. But I had to be superior right? He had done those things to me!

What I failed to understand, even though I genuinely wanted to, was that I was only seeing what was true to me. We all have our own view of what is true based on our own view of what has happened to us. There is another side, though, isn't there? Yes. There is the view of the other party. In any given situation, they have a completely different view. Consider the picture below.

What matters then? The actual truth. And the actual truth when it comes to blame is that we can look inward for most of it. That probably makes a lot of us angry. Are you telling me everything is my fault, Deborah? No. I'm saying that It's a worthy therapy for us to go back and try to see how we could have done more to protect ourselves. Perhaps we are too severe on the concept of blame and it does have a productive purpose. I'm not suggesting that we beat ourselves up after the fact. We do that already, don't we? "How could I have let myself...". For many of us that is all too familiar. It happened to us because someone else took advantage of our weakness. Seeing the actual truth about our past will help us protect ourselves in the future. This requires higher thinking.

For me, being right within means seeking the truth about ones self, taking responsibility for what I put out into the world, and continuing to take a personal inventory of what I am doing. I did not come to this way of thinking overnight and I don't expect anyone else to either. Perhaps though, as we begin to see how much power we do hold over our own lives, we will see that we are ultimately accountable for the things we do control. That's a lot of stuff.