I Made Everything My Responsibility. My Life Got Better
I spent years trying to prove things weren’t my fault. I was asking the wrong question.
I’m in class and I’ve got the cheat answers under my butt.
As the classroom is dead silent, all of the sudden I adjust my body a little.
SCRAMBLE!
All my classmates are looking at me now…
The teacher walks up to me, asks what I have under my body…
I look up to her as my whole body gets warm and sweaty…
I hand her the paper with all the answers…
And everyone bursts out laughing.
…
As the test is over, the teacher tells me to stay. Again my classmates look back at me and giggle.
Oh no, this is it… my father is also a teacher at this school so she will tell him.
I immediately start thinking of excuses.
…
Alex, I know you cheated, but I won’t tell your father.
Just redo the test again.
I’m completely shocked, I was ready to defend myself, say I didn’t have time to study. And that if only I hadn’t moved I never would’ve been caught.
But instead, she gives me a chance to redo it? And she won’t tell my father?
…
Looking back, this was obviously my fault.
I literally had the answers under my butt.
But whenever something went wrong, my first instinct wasn’t to ask what I’d done wrong.
It was to find a reason why it wasn’t really my fault.
My father would give me something to do.
I’d completely forget.
Alex, what happened?
Ah... I couldn’t find it. I tried, but it didn’t work.
I hadn’t tried.
I forgot.
But now my father thought I’d tried.
And somehow that made me feel better.
I cared more about looking responsible than actually being responsible.
I stole my dads credit card to buy virtual currencies in a game…
I just took a little bit of money, I didn’t think it was that much…
And then I bought some gems in Clash of Clans.
But in the moment, my stomach drops.
Something feels wrong, but then for a second…
I get to become better at this video game.
I tell myself that I deserve this.
…
My father finds out.
Alex, what did you do with my card?!
And somehow...
I still deny it.
I run to my mother.
I tell her I didn’t do anything.
She believes me.
So now she’s defending me from my father...
while I’m standing there knowing he’s right.
And suddenly they’re arguing with each other...
over something I know I did.
…
I thought denying my mistakes protected me.
But responsibility doesn’t disappear because you refuse to take it.
Someone else usually ends up carrying it.
I’m halfway across the world when I realize I’ve made a serious mistake.
I’m buying a house from my father...
and I forgot to sign one of the documents.
The loan needs to be paid out urgently.
And because of my mistake, my father could lose thousands of dollars.
So I have to tell him.
…
Two days pass before I finally call him.
Father... I messed up.
He gets upset.
And immediately, my brain starts doing what it had done since I was a kid.
The bank wasn’t clear.
I’m halfway across the world.
How was I supposed to know?
I was buying my own house...
but for a moment I was the same kid sitting in that classroom trying to explain away the cheat sheet under his butt.
…
But then he tells me…
Alex, it’s all good. I’m not angry at you.
Life happens, let’s just solve this problem.
…
And suddenly there was nothing left to defend.
I had made the mistake.
He knew I’d made the mistake.
I knew I’d made the mistake.
So we could finally stop figuring out who to blame and start figuring out what to do.
I’m trying to water the flowers in my garden, but all of the sudden the water hose breaks…
I try to reinstall it but I can’t fix it…
I just lay it down on the ground and hope my parents fixes it…
…
My father calls me up…
Alex, why is the water hose here?
I tell him that it’s broken and that it can’t get in.
Then he tells me
Alex, if you don’t know the answer. Call me, or ask ChatGPT. Whatever, just don’t leave a task uncompleted.
For a split second I try to think about something to say to defend myself…
To tell him that it wasn’t my fault.
But, I tell him…
I was wrong, and you’re absolutely right…
I messed up, and will 100% call you or help myself out. I won’t half ass it.
That was it.
No argument.
No excuse.
Nothing to protect.
…
My dad smiles…
Claps my back…
And heads on off…
When my teacher caught me cheating, I thought admitting I was wrong meant losing.
For years, I protected myself that way.
If I could find a reason something wasn’t my fault, I didn’t have to feel as bad about it.
And sometimes...
things genuinely weren’t my fault.
But eventually I realized I was asking the wrong question.
Because proving something wasn’t my fault never told me what to do next.
So now I try to ask:
What part of this is mine?
Sometimes the answer is everything.
Sometimes it’s almost nothing.
But I can always decide what I do next.
I used to protect my ego by denying my mistakes.
Now I protect my relationships by admitting them.
Taking responsibility doesn’t mean believing everything is your fault.
Not everything that happens to me is my fault.
But what I do with it is my responsibility.