We’re taught at a very young age to be responsible. When we see people who are being responsible, we try to imitate them, and we’re told by the people who are taking care of us to be more responsible, to take responsibility.
For me, responsibility comes down to being able to see a need and take action. Responsibility is seeing that this action needs to be taken, that this issue needs to be resolved and taking action towards resolving that issue or engaging in that activity. That’s a very basic way of understanding responsibility.
On the other side of things is irresponsibility. We’re often condemned for being irresponsible or it’s used as a very negative way of demeaning someone by calling them irresponsible. “You’re irresponsible.” “You’re not taking responsibility.” I’m sure we’ve all heard that at some point in time in our life. What that means is seeing a need but then not doing anything about it, being completely inactive or even ignoring that need, ignoring it to the detriment of the world around you, the people around you, or any other aspect of life.
I want to kind of throw a new spin on the way we think about our responsibility. That is to recognize that there are times where the right, the moral, the ethical decision to make is to intentionally be irresponsible, to see a need and not avoid it, but to leave it unmet.
It’s a real challenge for a lot of people because we have to retrain the way we’ve looked at responsibility our whole lives, and when we see a need, we have to not ignore it, but to stay present and stay engaged with it, and at the same time refrain or hold back from trying to meet that need, from actually taking action to meet that need.
I think what all that comes down to is that there are really complex challenges in our world. There are complex challenges in society, and oftentimes we’ll see that there’s a problem and our intervention can create more problems than it fixes. Again, this is not about ignoring the problem. You still acknowledge the problem, you still stay present, and you stay engaged with the problem, but you don’t act to try to resolve that problem or meet that need in any significant way.
Again this kind of goes against a lot of our upbringing and a lot of the ways we’ve been raised by our parents and everyone else. Especially in schools, we talk so much about taking responsibility and being active and engaged. This is critically important, but I’m going to throw a new way of thinking about this at you. There are times in your life where acting irresponsible is absolutely the right way to go.
One way of approaching this is just through the idea of self-care. There are many needs in our lives that we face, that we try to fulfill, and when meeting those needs overwhelms our ability and our own health and welfare, then those needs are better left unfulfilled in the name of preserving our own health and embodiment and welfare.
I think this is really really important because especially people who are in the early stages of their career, they look at all the needs around them, they look at all the responsibilities that they are taking on and they become overwhelmed because they don’t know how to meet those needs effectively. What it comes down to is not ignoring responsibility, but not engaging with that responsibility, not engaging with the need that you observe or that you see in the world. “How do you think about responsibility in your own lives?” “Have there been times that you’ve had to deliberately be irresponsible in order to take care of yourself, in order to take care of those around you?”
I think intentionally observing the need to be responsible and not taking responsibility can be an incredible value, an incredible virtue, and an incredible ability.
