Being Responsible

Normally, I hate the term "personal responsibility." Most of the time the term is thrown out in political dialogue, a rather meaningless weapon conservatives use to batter the poor and further erode the social safety net. Regardless, when the term is taken without its political context, it serves a useful purpose in everyday life. It could be referred to, rather clumsily, as a sort of personal "personal responsibility," a responsibility that applies to our personal lives rather than our politics. It really has two separate connotations, both personal responsibility as applying to our own actions, and also the idea that our lives are the result of the actions we take, and thus we are alternately at fault or worthy of accolades for how our lives turn out. In its most extreme form, advocates of personal responsibility decree that we rise or fall entirely on our own merits and hard work. But this is certainly wrong, contrary to the lived experiences of millions of people. It ignores the role that our upbringing, the economy, and all manner of other factors play in our lives, factors that are totally out of our control. 

I take a different view of the idea. I don't believe in "personal responsibility" as much for how far we go in our lives as I do for the small decisions we make every day. There are many factors that are completely out of our control, but we still have control over a myriad of smaller things. These things we can and should take personal responsibility for. These little things do impact our lives, and the quality of the life we all share.

We have a responsibility, for instance, to be kind to each other, both humans and animals. When you go to a restaurant and the food is lousy, don't take it out on your server. They didn't make the meal, after all, and don't deserve your petty wrath because the linguine was cold. Tip your server; if you can't afford to tip, you really can't afford to eat out. The minimum wage for food servers (tipped workers) is set at $2.13, and while I find this a grotesquely unfair, until the system changes the server relies on the customer to tip and make up the difference. The cashier waiting on you at the grocery store has no control over the fact that they were out of soda, or the item on special didn't ring up right. The people who wait on you, from the girl at the front desk of the library, to the cashier and the customer service rep who answers your call, are fellow human beings. They are not your slaves, to be ill-treated simply because you are in a bad mood. Be kind to them as a general rule rather than an exception, and the world will be a better place.

We have a responsibility to be thoughtful in our dealings with the world around us. When you toss something out the window while you drive, you're making the world worse for everyone else with your thoughtlessness. It's bad enough when it's a cigarette butt or candy wrapper, but getting rid of unwanted animals in a manner little better than littering is a criminal act. I suspect that those who drop off cats and dogs (or other pets, like all those in Florida who decided they didn't want their pet pythons) think they are being kind, but to abandon an animal is the worst sort of cruelty. It is thoughtless to those who live nearby, who are faced with the choice of having to adopt the animal, ignore it and hope it goes away, or take it to a shelter. It is incalculably worse for the animal. Some will certainly be taken in by kind strangers. But for the majority of those animals, being abandoned is a death sentence. Whether through predation, starvation, or an unfortunate meeting with a car, often the act of abandoning an animal is murdering it just as surely as if you had killed it yourself. 

Be courteous when in a public space, places that exist for the enjoyment of everyone. Clean up after yourself. Be civil. Bring your library books back on time and in good condition--they belong to everyone in the community, and it is wrong for you to keep them or damage them through carelessness. Of course, I would say that, being a librarian, but the point stands. Being responsible means considering more than just yourself. The little actions that make our world worse are the result of people who do not think of others in their actions, from the man who takes up two parking spaces, or parks in the handicap spot because it is convenient, to the person who decides that they would rather dump their trash in the woods somewhere instead of paying to have it hauled away. These actions are selfish, ignoring the fact that we have obligations beyond ourselves, societal obligations about how we should act in our everyday dealings with one another. We may sometimes feel helpless to change some of the things that are wrong with our world, from poverty and hunger on a massive scale to environmental degradation, but we can certainly start with our own little actions where we live. If we could all, individually, make that choice, I suspect we would be surprised at how quickly the quality of our lives improved.