on freedom and responsibility ...

I have been reflecting lately, due in part to the desire to post something new on my blog and due in part to a class I am taking, about the subject of personal responsibility and human interaction.

We are definitely not Robinson Crusoe’s that live in the island of Despair but any stretch of the imagination, quite the opposite, we live in very intricate societies, surrounded by many many circles of friends, family and associates.  It is the complexity of that human interaction what intrigues me. Are we “affected” by others? Do we “affect” others? If they and we do, to what extent is this effect?  Where is the line of personal responsibility drawn? Are we justified to act in certain way as a result of somebody’s behavior? Of as a result of their effect on us? or vice versa?

 “We believe that men will be punished for their own sins …” claims an LDS article of faith; ... their own, not the neighbor’s, nor the provoker’s, nor the tempter’s, but our own sins rather. Free will and choice. The thoughts of Viktor Frankl come to mind when I think of this: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” The freedom to choose is definitely the greatest gift we have as humans. Things seem to point in the same direction which is that we have been given freedom to act, agency, that it is individual, personal and that we will are to respond for that gift, each and everyone of us individually, making us "response-able", or rather able to respond, or as we say on our day to day, responsible.

Back to my original thought of my neighbor and our interactions, Christianity teaches “… whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger …”  In this particular case, no matter what, I am not to be angry with my brother, with or without a cause; it places personal responsibility back where it should be, at full extent of our capacities, at full length of our actions, no matter what the behavior of my brother is, it is my responsibility not be angry with him, regardless of his actions. If we don't take this personal responsibility we will be caught in samasara teaches Buddhism, that is the realm of suffering, others would call this rather co-dependant relationships, where blame is passed from one side to the other and viceversa on a continual spiral. On the other side of the spectrum there is a clear realization that though it is true that we all exist in a interdependent state, it is only on the basis of personal responsibility that we can learn from our relationships with others, it is only when we are truly responsible for our actions that the mirror of others serves us as knowledge, as revelation, as the path to enlightenment.

I hope to remember this always, that I have been given the freedom to choose my response and no matter what the stimulus is, I always retain that agency, that freedom to chose my response. That it is on those choices of free will that I grow.