We have all heard the saying that “life is unfair.” But, whenever we experience hard times, that old chestnut brings little comfort. When a person first experiences trauma, that last thing they want to hear from anyone is that “life is unfair.” The trauma victim is well aware of life’s inequities! What they are looking for is a “fix.” They want to rectify the situation. They want to get their life back. And, very often, they want justice. They feel that they have been wronged and they want something done about it. Inevitably, whether one is fighting political injustice or social inequality, whether one is fighting for their personal rights under the law, or whether one is dealing with physical trauma, the search for justice almost always leads to a period where we search for someone or something to blame. But, speaking as both a life coach and a survivor, I can confidently say that, sometimes the search for someone to blame will actually create set backs in your recovery. The Blame Game is a slippery slope to be sure. Here are a few thoughts about the effects of “blaming” in the recovery process. Lets start off by taking a look at the idea of blame, and what it means in our society. Because of the way that our legal system works, and the way disputes are managed in general, the idea of “blame” in our society is closely linked to the idea of “responsibility.” When something goes wrong, we ask ourselves, “who is responsible?” If a person is wronged because of another person’s negligence, then the negligent person is “held responsible.” They are blamed, and they are expected, by law or under threat of retroprocity, to rectify said damage and, often, accept punitive action for having wronged another party. It is considered a grave injustice in our society when a person who has been wronged is forced to clean up a mess that was created by another person’s negligence. This means that the person who is to blame is not being held responsible. They are getting away with being a bad person. This turn of events often infuriates people. It is often considered a sign of weak character not to demand justice, and not to insist that the party who is to blame not be punished, or not be held to account for their wrong-doings. We have all heard stories about people seeking justice, and fighting in the court system for years so that the party who is to blame is held responsible for their actions. This is all normal. So normal, you might be wondering why I bring it up. I feel I must make these distinctions clear in order to discuss what I believe to be the inherent problem in how our culture deals with blame and responsibility. Let me explain further… The problem with blame is that, sometimes the party who is responsible is not capable of fixing the mess that they have created. In my case, the drunk driver that struck me down on a dark road and nearly killed me could not do anything to take back the pain that his negligence caused. He could never give me back the years of agony and struggle that I was forced to endure in order to recover fully. He could be punished under law, and his insurance company could be forced to pay a settlement, after several years in court, and I might feel that I have been avenged, but no one could reverse what happened. No one, not the law, not the man at fault, not the doctors, not my family, could do anything to reverse the fact that my life had been shattered and that I was bound to live with pain and discomfort for years. No matter who I wanted to blame, there was nothing that could be done to change this stark fact of life. The only thing to do was to get out of the cycle of blame and admit to myself that it was up to me to make my life work again. Blame was a dead end. I had to be responsible for my life, even though I was not the one to blame. I had to separate blame and responsibility. And that is one of life’s’ toughest challenges. Just hearing me say these words might make you cringe. You know it’s not fair that you have to be responsible when you are not to blame, at least if you live by the model that I described above, the model which most people live by, that blame and responsibility are linked. But there comes a time in everyone’s life where they must come to terms with the fact that the conventional idea of how blame and responsibility work must be abandoned for the betterment of their own life. Keep in mind that there is no one I know who has a better excuse to play the blame game then me. When I tell the story of how I was hit one night by a drunk driver, most people are outraged by the injustice. I was performing first aid on a wounded man in another car, standing alone, applying pressure to a wound like a Good Samaritan, surrounded by police who were directing traffic. A drunk in a sports car careened through the intersection and crushed me between his car and a concrete lamppost, almost killing me. How unfair is that? Who, if not me, has a right to blame? But blame would never get me to walk again. In fact, blame might have even give me an excuse to never get out of my wheel chair. If I wanted to be able-bodied again, if I wanted to be free, I needed to drop blame. But how does a person do this? How does one leave behind the old paradigm I described above, that is, the social convention that links blame and responsibility? A simple first step would be to change the language that you use to describe your situation. Many life-coaches and trauma recovery experts now prefer the term “ownership” over “responsibility.” I think this is a good idea. Instead of getting caught up in the tangles of who is responsible, ask yourself, who owns this life of yours? Why, you own it, of course! And, under the concept of ownership, it is up to you to take charge of managing that life, regardless of who is to blame for what has gone wrong. When you own a car, or a house, even if you have to prosecute another individual to get them to clean up their mess, it is still you, the owner, who must take action. You are in charge of what you own. You own your life and everything in it, including the things that you don’t like about it. In taking ownership of your entire life, you are also taking ownership of the changes you might need to make to pursue the life you want. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We will discuss the nature and challenge of making personal changes later in this book. For the time being, lets just focus on getting past blame. In this essay, we have established the problem with blame and proposed shift in language that will serve us in getting past the conventional “blame/responsibility” paradigm and move on to the “ownership” model of personal accountability. Now, we need to discuss the greatest tool of all in giving up blame and taking ownership of our lives. Let us consider the power of forgiveness…
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