What makes some people struggle to change their lives for the better? And why is it that some people find it easy to change? Why do some people take psychotherapy and get better fairly quickly and others spend an entire life at the therapist’s office? At the root of this difference, is the notion of taking responsibility for one’s life.
An important aspect in the process of maturing is to break free from the notion that our parents are responsible for our well-being. While we may break free from our parents physically, as we leave home, we may not have been taught to break-free from the need for others to be responsible for one’s own life. Let’s try and understand this a little deeper.
Being responsible for oneself is not just limited to physical acts of taking care of your body, your needs and your surroundings. Yes these matter too, but it goes beyond that. Growing into maturity means coming to the firm understanding at the emotional level that “Only I am responsible for my peace, contentment and joy”. This sounds like a very cruel statement. And at this stage we may wonder if this makes us anti-social. But, in fact, the opposite is true.
As children, our environment was altered to ensure that we stay safe. Our parents (if they were good parents) made sure that we felt safe, loved and protected at all costs. This is indeed important for not just our physical safety, but more importantly our psychological sense of safety. However, as we grow up, we begin to realize that the world is inherently unpredictable and un-controllable. We do not have parents that we can run to for safety. Nor do we have a guardian angel changing our environment to suit our needs.
At this stage, some of us get attached to our romantic partners to provide this level of emotional security. As most of would have realised by now, that is not a truly satisfying solution. Our partners, more often that not, are also going through the process of growing up, and they do not make ideal attachment figures. Some of us begin to get attached to our children – but that doesn’t work for long – as the children grow up, leave and have their own lives. At this stage many of us become religious or spiritual and attach to God or a Guru. This can help to some extent. But when bad things happen to us, our faith is questioned. We are torn between our devotion to God or the Guru and the undeniable fact that God did not help us when we needed her the most. This shakes our faith. Finally, if this is not resolved, many become cynical and even nihilistic. And the last few years are led in a process of bitterness and sadness.
The discovery of this fact – that there is no one we can rely upon – is painful. But this is a psychological pain that is essential for our growth. The process of weaning away happens through pain. Pain is an essential ingredient to this process of transformation. As we come to realize that the external world is mean to us, that it does not conform to our wishes, two responses come about. One, fear – we begin to feel overwhelmed. Some of us curl up in our beds and cry. We indulge in self-pity (“the poor me” syndrome). Essentially, we withdraw from life. Two, anger -some of us adopt an attitude of blame, criticism and anger. Both these movements of the mind-emotions complex are an adaptive process, trying to respond to an inherently unsafe environment. We either withdraw from life or begin to fight life.
Sadly, without self-awareness, this process can go on for the rest of our lives. We either resort to self-pity and withdrawal, or we resort to fighting life. Critically though, both these movements of the mind, show that we are yet to adapt to the new norm of accepting that we have no control over our environment, and that we do not have a parent or guardian to swoop in and change that for us.
What then should we do?
First, it is essential to accept that life is unpredictable and uncontrollable. We have very little control on what our friends, relatives, partners, children, employers, economy and the “forces of the world” do unto us. When bad things happen, which will inevitably happen, we cannot demand from life that “these things should not happen to me”. We must invert our basic expectation from life. Most of us go on in life with an implicit (and yet unstated) assumption that only good things will happen to me. We can begin by challenging this assumption and re-state it as “There is no guarantee that only good things will happen to me”. This fundamental inversion of the our assumptions is critical. Buddha understood this, which is why, the first rule of Buddhism is “Life is Misery”.
Hope, which seems bleak, is restored in the second step. Here, we say although we have almost no control over the environment, we do in fact have a say over what we can do here, now, in this situation. Let’s assume that we fail a job interview. This naturally brings sadness. At this juncture, we can either blame God, feel sorry for ourselves, or accept that we have to go on and apply to other jobs – perhaps improve our interviewing skills. Those of us, who haven’t weaned ourselves from our parents psychologically, expect that we somehow get this job we did not get. That some miracle swoops in and sorts our the problem – now! If we have begun to mature, we accept that nobody, no God, no Guru – nothing can take away this feeling of sadness and discomfort. And the way to resolve the pain, is by going through it – alone. “Only I am responsible for dealing with this pain. How can I bring the best of my skills and abilities to solve this situation?” This reframing of the onus of responsibility to oneself is critical to self-transformation. This – and only this – determines whether we get out of therapy quickly – or we remain stuck for decades.
This ‘shifting of the locus of responsibility’ is not easy to make. It requires courage. It involves truly understanding the first step – that the world is inherently painful and will not conform to our wishes. Accepting this is not an easy task for we are brought up in a world that leads us to believe that we have a right to demand anything from the Government, society, our parents and indeed from life itself. This is a peculiar and yet pernicious belief inculcated in us by the modern capital, consumer, libertarian world. It requires waking up and realising that we cannot control the world. We will not get everything we desire. This realisation comes about slowly and yet surely as we go through life. This is where the second step – realisation that I can do something here and now to arrange my peace – is vital. Without which, we slip into cynicism and sadness.
When we realise that “I can do very little – in the here and now”, then we begin to do that. We realize that we are frail boats in the stormy sea of life. And yet, this small will that we have, can indeed be exercised. We then begin to exercise this will. This is the beginning of transformation – of taking responsibility for one’s life. In fact, Nature wants us to exercise this will – it is Nature’s way of acting though us. As we practice this skill, we begin to take tremendous joy in acting our will out. In every situation, every day, we ask ourselves “What is expected out of me – here and now”. This was how Viktor Frankl, psychotherapist and the author of Man’s Search for Meaning phrased this truth:
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
Viktor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning.
When we consider that we have an obligation to respond to life, to God, to Nature without questioning its will, we gain peace. We assume full responsibility for our lives – paradoxically in surrender – surrender to what is, to Nature’s will. And then, even sickness, or death is okay because we retain a choice to respond to these seemingly horrible things in a manner that is fit of dignity, poise and grace.
This is when we would have truly blossomed into the life we are meant to be.
Journey of a thousand words 