Taking Responsibility

It seems that the more decisions are taken out of our hands, the more irritable we become. Haven't you noticed that people are becoming more short-tempered than they used to be? They are less friendly, somehow more suspicious and more impatient?

I believe that two main factors are responsible for this increase in tension and irritability that we see on every side of us. The first factor is change. We are living in a time of unprecedented and threatening change. Things and forces upon which we used to count on as fixed and permanent, we now see as temporary.

While change is an important and desirable factor in keeping people happy and interested, there is a point beyond which people don't like to let go. A little change is a good thing. But when change begins threatening the factors on which we build our lives and careers, when it threatens to topple institutions and factors we once believed to be permanent, that's a different story.

This phenomenon is no longer localized but is cropping up all over the place, in different forms; it's causing anxiety, anger, aggression and withdrawal, among students, in ghettos, labor unions, workers, intellectuals, and high-ranking officials.

The decisions that are affecting people today are being made by levels of government, by departments of levels of government, by economic interests, by the media, and other so-called experts.

The resulting fragmentation destroys the deep psychic need for wholeness, which in the end can be recovered when a person decides what he or she wants out of life. Self-control, coupled with accountability, will be the basis of a healthy human ecosystem.

People feel that most of the decisions being made, decisions that affect their lives and destinies, are beyond their own control. The resulting feeling of fragmentation and anxiety leads to irritability, to anger, to short tempers, and a lack of any sense of humor or positive attitude.

What do we do about it? We take the decision-making process back into our own hands, at least to the extent that it's possible. Self-control coupled with accountability, being accountable for what we do and for what we are, taking charge of our own lives and destinies, can help us get back on a more human and friendly basis once again.

It's all about maturity. We don't think of a mature person flying off the handle, getting angry over ridiculous little things, being short-tempered. When we think of a mature man or woman, regardless of his or her age, we think of a calm, understanding person, a person who would smile at a another person's mistake before he or she would become angry or upset about it. A mature person tends to be accountable.

So if you've found yourself caught up in the modern sickness of irritability and short-temperedness, if you've lost some of your patience with your fellow men and women, chalk it up to change and to having others make our decisions for us. It is time for each of us to become responsible and take over our own life again