Responsibility

As kids we are expected to take more responsibility as we mature.  It starts with the basics, like getting dressed and tidying our room and moves on to contributing around the house and so on.

Many of us are pretty grumpy about the relentless expansion of our responsibilities as we grow up.  We need a mixture of encouragement and coercion to persuade us to accept it.

At some point many of us choose not to accept further responsibility and settle into a “comfort zone”.  For some this decision comes quite early.  Responsibility is hard.  It is tempting to kick back and let someone else take the strain.

Responsibility is part of growth.  The more we develop ourselves as individuals, the greater our personal responsibility - the two are inseparable.  The more highly developed we are as individuals the harder it becomes to take decisions that harm others and the more tranquility we have to practice.

In the past it was believed that it was not possible to combine both the intense responsibility of a family, or the responsibility of making a living with the more general responsibility of deep spiritual development.  Monasteries were devised specifically because of this.

Today our challenge is to combine all three and achieve the highest levels of personal/spiritual growth.

The challenges we face today are largely the result of the “teenage” years of our society.  We have behaved as if we would live forever, no matter what we do.  We have consumed recklessly to the point of crisis.  When we talk about ethics, what we are really talking about are higher levels of responsibility.

It is time for us to grow up, as a society and accept that our responsibility is not solely for our short term pleasure, or for our individual achievement, but for our continued evolution as a species and all that that depends on.

We need most of our institutions and a significant percentage of individuals to accept the responsibility of making this change happen.

Very specifically we need to change the way that we prepare our children for adulthood.  The model we currently use is one that was designed to generate obedience rather than responsibility.  

To help in this process I have teamed up with a wonderful group of people to create an organisation called A Mentor For Every Child and it’s more funky teen facing sibling Grow up Gr8.   Our vision is to make a mentor available to every child and we need all the help we can get.