No B.S Friday: I don’t believe in ‘blame’. But we can still be free.
Last week I was saying that I can’t really ‘blame’ anyone for doing stupid things. Most of us are just products of our influences – our times, our culture, our exposure to music videos etc.
But then some people hit me up and said, “Hang on, Jon. What about your ideas of radical responsibility? The idea that our lives are always what we create?
What room is there for personal agency if we’re just leaves in the winds of culture, history and Molly Meldrum’s CountDown?”
Two points here. The first is that I believe everyone has free-will – even if it exists only as a puny and undeveloped muscle. No matter what your background, in the here and now, you have a capacity for choice.
If you listen carefully, you’ll be able to hear the voice of your highest self.
The second point is that personal responsibility is like a muscle, and muscles develop through use.
When I was 17 my hormones had the upper hand. I hunted soccer balls during the day, and girls at night. I was kind of wild.
But overtime, you learn how to master your drives (the hormones also settle down a bit which helps). The more you engage with it, the more you are able to separate yourself from the forces that push you this way and that, and you take the reins into your own hands.
Eventually, I think, you come to a point where your history and the world around you have no influence over you. Nor do your emotional and hormonal reactions.
In this space, I think, you are completely free.
You are not driven by your emotions and hormones. You are not a slave to your past, but the master of your future.
(Note to self: get that printed on a t-shirt.)
I think very few of us ever achieve a state of ‘complete’ freedom, but I also think it is a spectrum. The more you practice ‘self-control’ the better able you are to act from a place of clear consciousness.
And the decisions you make will then be more in line with drives of your higher-self – drives that are aligned with love, compassion, generosity… all the good things.
And in that sense, they will be better decisions.
But like any skill, it’s something that comes with practice.
And the one point I would make is that if you’re going to master your history, then you need to face it. You need to square up and own it.
And I think that begins by coming to terms with all of it – even the bits that make you cringe and shrink.
You need to go back and find compassion for that moron doing doughnuts in the car park. Understand him. Accept him. Forgive him.
When you realise that the past is not your fault, the future becomes your responsibility.
And with great responsibility comes great power.
JG.