A Self-Focussed Look at Responsibility

A Self-Focussed Look at Responsibility

This morning I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend the New Story Leadership (NSL) Conference at the Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, as well as a session at the World Bank, part of which was attended by some of the NSL members.

I think the world has come a long way such that it allows for opportunities for young people from South Africa, Palestine, Israel (as well as the US, China and Canada as was the case last night) to come together to speak about what it means and requires to be a competitive young person today internationally; to talk about what risk-taking means for young people, but also for international financial organizations; to talk about what networking means for trust-building or what peace treaties mean for trust-building; to talk about what it means to live in conflict-affected society; what it means to be a young man or woman in combat or in armed resistance; to talk about what collateral damage means and what losing loved ones means and to talk about what it means to be optimistic, hopeful, determined, responsible.

I learnt that taking responsibility is not limited to being guilty. To me, taking responsibility is about me and what I commit myself to doing. It means that I do not look for someone to blame for the suffering, corruption, failure, that has happened and that continues to happen anywhere and anywhere; that I do not wait for someone else to do their job better, or to do their job, to be accountable, 'take responsibility', to fix the problems that I see around me inside my own country, my home , but also in the country, the home of the other nineteen year old girl sitting in front of me with tears in her eyes, the other countless human beings that populate one Earth with me, who I need, just as they need me.

Ubuntu - "I am because you are", does not just mean: "you are important to me". It does not mean "I need you to be, (and to be X Y Z) for me to be". It means "that for you and I to both be X Y Z, I need to be everything that I can be.

I believe that speaking about what countries, nations, governments, NGO's, NPO's, IGO's, INGO's, MP's, MNC's, and 'CEO's - whatever 'powers that be' need to do, takes the responsibility away from the individual. It takes the responsibility away from me and the billions of other first person's in the world. I believe that speaking about what 'young people' need to do is also dangerous in the sense that the responsibility falls to far away from me. Not only will I not fit into that constituency of duty forever, but it does not do enough to force me to commit to myself, forever.

I am aware that this kind of thinking potentially opens itself up to quite a bit of questioning and/or criticism. I also realize that questions like those surrounding responsibility are ones that I will spend the rest of my trying to answer. But for now, in a time where I am establishing for myself what seems true and important to me (to an extent) rather than having a family, church or school system do it for me, these realizations matter. They feel true to me, and at the very least, they are probably useful and not entirely selfish. This is because I think this allows me to spend a lifetime committed to what is at the root of what I take responsibility for, which is every child, mother, human being that suffers.

There is so much more to think and write about. There many more questions to be asked about what this means for our expectations of others or the general "People ought to...." assumptions. But those, are for another time.