Where to put your blame
“No one to blame! That was why most people led lives they hated, with people they hated. How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one’s nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right. You may be fragmented, but you feel absolved of all the blame for it. Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame!”
Erica Jong
First things first, we are often victims of awful circumstance and the awful decisions of awful people, I do not deny that. But when our lives fall apart we are rarely able to see beyond the awfulness of others. We are rarely able to see how many small but consistent, less awful decisions we took to lead us into a situation that increased the likelihood of something catastrophic taking place. Like being aghast that our car is broken into despite consistently leaving valuables in there, often forgetting to lock the doors, and neglecting to organize the garage so that you could park it safely in there to begin with. Instead, we feel justified blaming the thief, and rightfully so! Just because I left my phone in an unlocked vehicle didn’t mean someone HAD to steal it!
Catastrophe brings many sorrows, one of which is a sense of blame. Sometimes, to survive our worst moments we come up with rational and often legitimate stories of why our downfall was not really our fault. I might have been nearly destroyed but at least I am still right.
It is easy to do this when we have clear detractors; people who do not even hide that they wish for and work towards our demise. It’s also easy to point to our past, particularly at our upbringing to place responsibility on our caregivers who didn’t hug us enough or hugged us too much. None of these rationalizations are entirely false. But this is not about finding the “truth” right now (in your traumatized state you won’t be the best arbiter of the truth anyway). It’s not about justification or being right. This is about actually healing and thriving despite, and even thanks to, your disgrace.
Blaming others is a comforting balm for the burn of public failure but it will not lead to the deeper, more surgical healing that is needed long term. If you miss the role you play in your own misery, however big or small, your are doomed to continue in the same risky path and when misfortune strikes again you will call it bad luck.
The uncomfortable truth, if you really want to know it, is that you ARE bad. The line between good and evil cuts through every human heart, as Solzhynysten taught us and your heart is no different. You have the capacity to hurt others and yourself and you do so unconsciously more often than you are aware. You are the author of your misery. Which is bad news.
But the good news is that you are the author.
One of the biggest leaps of faith a person will ever take is the acceptance of accountability for his failures. This is the surgery that begins the path towards greater change. Because only then can he take more control of his life and live it authentically. If we aren’t driving our own boat then who cares where we end up at all? There would be no satisfaction in arriving anywhere if we just sat in the backseat while someone else did the work to get us there. When we are in the driver’s seat, we might hit more bumps in the road and take more wrong turns but when we arrive to our destination it has a completely different meaning.
We have been designed to be autonomous, self-determined beings and we live in an environment in which there are plenty of people, some not so trustworthy, who are eager to determine our lives for us. No way! Even if it means I’m going to run over a few pylons and smash into a few road signs it is still in my best interest to gain control of my destiny and steer myself.
There are plenty excuse you can make and blame that you can deflect so that you feel better. Sometimes the accusations against you are patently or partially false. At the very least you can take accountability by saying, this is the mess I am in and I am responsible to navigate these waters, not anyone else. But often we have plenty of “blame” in our misery and even though it hurts now we might as well take the bumps of today’s accountability just so that we can secure ourselves in the driver’s seat for tomorrow’s journey. There is much to lose but more to gain in taking this strategy.