Response-ability

expects an answer from us on how to deal with it.

 

Responsibility often goes from top to bottom, from superior to inferior and from giving to taking. Thus, parents take responsibility for their children, protect them also through their responsibility, help them by taking responsibility where the children would be helpless, vulnerable and exposed.

In this way, people in leadership positions take responsibility for their subordinates and assume responsibility for a goal, for success and also for failure or defeat.

Sometimes the responsibility also goes from bottom to top. For example, when we have to answer to others who question our actions and sometimes our reasoning and statements and demand that we justify ourselves to them. Some have to answer before a court of law or before their conscience, or, some think, before God. They have to answer as if they were guilty. They must behave as if they were bad and the others good, as if they were small and the others big, as if they were dependent and the others superior to them in prestige and power.

We can only assume responsibility in a good sense for ourselves and for others if we are capable of it. In order to be able to take responsibility, it often takes a long time of learning and practicing beforehand, and this is proven by performance.

Only then can we take responsibility for ourselves and others. The more responsibility we take, the greater our reputation and influence and power. But only as long as our responsibility serves others, otherwise we easily become irresponsible.

But sometimes we take on too much responsibility, even though it is neither ours nor serves others. Sometimes others also take on too much responsibility for us, even where it is not theirs and serves neither us nor them.

Sometimes we shift a responsibility to others that must remain our responsibility, or we expect others to take responsibility for us. 

In all these cases we remain children.

Responsibility usually demands that we face a challenge that we can no longer avoid. We grow from it and become involved as well as independent and free.

Who knows response-ability?