Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.
– Joan Didion
Responsibility. Engagement of self, ego, pride, humility, and every nook and cranny between all things we consider we want and wish for and need.
We may run from responsibility. We may hide from responsibility until responsibility hooks our ankles, trips us to the ground, and demands attention for what’s lost, denied, and put off.
Time will display opportunities for us, repeatedly delivered, always available for the taking but not always seen. We may miss time’s offerings, the begin-again moments, where we could pick up and brush the dust and cobwebs off.
We may find the offerings and bend down to grasp the possibility—risk, joy, love, fear—and see responsibility etches the fine lines of any opportunity presented to us.
We may shake and shimmy, attempting to shed responsibilities’ tentacles, for responsibility requires awareness of what’s occurring. Unfortunately, seeing is not always the most comfortable or most sought-after solution to what ails our lives.
Acceptance of what is is required. We must relinquish our denial. There is no running and hiding.
We talk of self-respect, something we wish to buy or be given, but there is no self-respect hand-out. We must earn our self-respect. We must gather the experience of wilting and soaking in turbulent waters to find our roots, to instill strength when we feel we have none to tap into and definitely none to spare. Only then can we take a breath, straighten our spines, and move forward.
Responsibility. Accountability. Effort. Freedom. Choices. Pride. Humility.
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Image source: Pixabay
Weathered Well 