There is another aspect of this for me that seems related when I think about the word ‘responsibility’, that if I don’t follow through, or don’t commit, or am not reliable, then there are consequences of this. If I don’t learn to dance, then I’ll probably have slightly less fun dancing. If I am not a reliable person, then that means my friends have one less person they can rely on, if my house is not clean, that is one less place other people have that they can feel clean, if I am not working towards meaningful things, then the world and the people in it are in a sense ‘missing out’ on this. Responsibility seems to be something like recognizing these consequences.
When I am working on a group project, there seems to be a big jump between when I feel the responsibility and not. When I am not taking responsibility, then I feel very free to contribute as little or as much as I feel like. I float in and out of doing other things and setting intentions for big things and small, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between when I succeed at what I intended to do or not, and I don’t feel much desire to track this. If I commit to something, this seems to go hand in hand with a recognition of negative outcome, or lost positive outcome if I fail, which is the responsibility.
That feels like a burden, like I am constantly aware of a scary thing, and it tugs at my attention until it feels certain I will succeed. It also can feel like a debt, where I want to make sure that I have ‘done my part’.
There seems to be a thing like ‘managing responsibility levels’, where taking on too much responsibility compared to your perception of your ability to succeed at tasks leads can lead to anxiety or other mental health problems, or at least lots of pain from failing.
There is another aspect of this for me that seems related when I think about the word ‘responsibility’, that if I don’t follow through, or don’t commit, or am not reliable, then there are consequences of this. If I don’t learn to dance, then I’ll probably have slightly less fun dancing. If I am not a reliable person, then that means my friends have one less person they can rely on, if my house is not clean, that is one less place other people have that they can feel clean, if I am not working towards meaningful things, then the world and the people in it are in a sense ‘missing out’ on this. Responsibility seems to be something like recognizing these consequences.
When I am working on a group project, there seems to be a big jump between when I feel the responsibility and not. When I am not taking responsibility, then I feel very free to contribute as little or as much as I feel like. I float in and out of doing other things and setting intentions for big things and small, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between when I succeed at what I intended to do or not, and I don’t feel much desire to track this. If I commit to something, this seems to go hand in hand with a recognition of negative outcome, or lost positive outcome if I fail, which is the responsibility.
That feels like a burden, like I am constantly aware of a scary thing, and it tugs at my attention until it feels certain I will succeed. It also can feel like a debt, where I want to make sure that I have ‘done my part’.
There seems to be a thing like ‘managing responsibility levels’, where taking on too much responsibility compared to your perception of your ability to succeed at tasks leads can lead to anxiety or other mental health problems, or at least lots of pain from failing.