Laughing with friends over a beer, I recall the moment I was caught by my sergeant sleeping in a washed-out field in southern Louisiana. 48 hours of laborious exercises preparing for deployment had me exhausted, despite this, I gladly took the task of protecting our flank on a cold December day. I took up a prone position on my stomach in yellow dehydrated and over grown brush, I was the only one in my vicinity for a hundred or more feet, and I heard the rest of the unit moving so far away from my position that I couldn’t even hear them anymore. As the cold rain penetrated my uniform and ran down the back of my neck, I sneakily positioned my weapon in such a way where it would look like I was scoping out the enemy, but I could actually rest my cheek against the buttstock long enough to catch a quick snooze. Awakened abruptly, my sergeant standing over me “O’Donnell, I know your ass isn’t asleep right now” … “Yes I am, Sergeant” my exhaustion making me overtly honest. The silence from my sergeant and the subtle smile he held back in mild contempt for the brutal honesty I gave him let me know I caught him off guard. “That’s it? You’re not even going to try and hide it?” “No, that’s my bad Sergeant” … “Don’t do that dumb shit again” … “Roger, Sarge.”
Throughout my life, I recognize that the moments which I hold in highest regard, are moments where I took ultimate accountability for my position wherever it may be. Even when the cards are stacked against me, even when I’ve worked more in 2 days than the average American will work in a week, I found solace in owning my mistakes as my own. When I can’t find information I should know, I find solace in admitting it, and letting those around me know that I know where to find the information asked of me. If I fail and could have improved, I will own it. If I succeed and the success wasn’t my own, I will give credit.
In America today, the epidemic of pharmaceutical lessening of our anguish and depressive disorders has become out of control. People all around us vying for an opportunity to feel more than themselves, become a part of something bigger than themselves, to feel something for once in their apathetic lives. The emotional centers of those we love are often completely decimated by drugs designed to keep them from facing their thoughts or feelings, many times only to make them feel disassociated from themselves entirely.
We have designed a culture that is out to remove all accountability and responsibility from individuals and place as much of it onto the collective, the government, or anything other than oneself. Comfort is in, and accountability is too difficult a portrait to paint. We shouldn’t have to clean up the sidewalk from the trash we see, we have local government for that. We shouldn’t let the person in front of us merge, they should slow down and get behind us. We shouldn’t have to wait an extra 15 minutes for our food order, it’s not our problem if they’re busy, it’s theirs. We shouldn’t have to show flexibility in scheduling people in our organization, that’s not my problem.
It’s becoming clear that constantly placing the responsibility of our environment on the next guy is putting us into a giant merry-go-round of finger pointing, and ultimate self-pity…all while we collectively wonder where our ultimate purpose lies in this thing we call life. Yet, I hasten to argue that it could be possible that we would find the purpose we seek, the greater good we yearn for, and the collective community oriented feeling our grandparents reminisce on if we took all of those fingers and pointed them at ourselves. Though difficult to admit, the issues we recognize but refuse to take on still remain as issues even if we choose to put them off on someone else. The garbage can still needs changed, the laundry still needs done, the litter is still floating along the curb, and the burden of the task gets passed to the next.
Ironically, on the opposite end of the spectrum of accountability, we can get so caught up in the state of the world that we drive ourselves mad in the belief that all things are solely our responsibility, and it can quite literally drive us away from completing anything meaningful at all. This is certainly not a call to drive yourself into the ground under the idea that you are responsible for solving the national housing crisis, inflation, or starvation. Still yet there is some real beauty in the chain of dominoes which forms when a feasible act done repetitively begins to take hold in a community.
Recently I read an article and watched the video attached which shows a man picking up garbage around a crowded beach. After he began picking up the trash, another person noticed and removed a couple things they saw floating in the water. Within a half hour, dozens of people were cleaning a beach that just a half hour earlier, they were simply enjoying. It took one person to hold themselves accountable and responsible for the environment around them for the rest of the beach to do the same. Imagine this same concept in organizations, in your household, in business. It only takes one humble form of accountability to change an entire community.
Though it may be naturally attractive to persuade ourselves that the ground we walk on is not ours to care for, or that our personal comfort is more important than the next persons, it is simply a fallacy, and one which serves to ultimately leave us in collective ruins. When you take the finger of personal accountability and turn it on yourself, you remove the middle man and the excuses that come with it. When you turn the light on yourself, you realize that your highest calling isn’t only a career, profession, or goal, it is also placing the burden of the issues of the world around you on your shoulders and becoming an all-encompassing member of the community, organization, or society you’re already apart of. Choosing to separate yourself from your community or organization by forcing its issues to be solved in your absence, only serves for the solution not serve you at all, or not have your voice represented in the solutions presented.
By taking ultimate accountability for your environment, your team, giving credit with its wins and taking personal responsibility during its losses, you can construct teams built on trust, trust that each person will play their role and go beyond it to collectively succeed, rather than demanding that the collective succeed — or fail, in your absence. Like a bad lab partner, your best attribute becomes simply “shutting up” during the presentation of life when you have done nothing to contribute to its direction. Even so, you will be unable to avoid the grade given out, whether you participate or not, and put blind trust that the next person in line cares enough to put their best foot forward to avoid you failing along with them.
