Responsibility

We are blessed with freedom, and what we do with our freedom is hugely important. If we wanted to maximize our physical pleasure, we would lead hedonistic lives.

And I must say that if there was anyone in a position to lead a fully hedonistic life, it would have been Bob Dylan. So great to have him provide an important teaching on responsibility!

Yes, we are free, but with freedom comes responsibility: the responsibility to choose right over wrong, the responsibility to respect the rights of other human beings, the responsibility to provide for and teach our children. And these are but a small portion of our responsibilities as members of humankind and citizens of the world.

Responsibility is at least in part innate to us. If it is a mother bird’s instinct to attend to the feeding of her nestlings, then certainly it is our instinct to care for our children.

But no doubt responsibility is also something to be learned and something that may have to be accepted even if it is contrary to our personal interests. In this vein, I think of our responsibility to preserve our planet for future generations. Individually and collectively, we are causing severe and potentially irreparable damage to our planet. If we really love our children and grandchildren and consider it our primary goal in life to have them be happy, how can we at the same time overheat our planet?

Thankfully, the invisible force of responsibility exists, and hopefully we can do more to educate one another on our responsibility for the environment and our responsibility to elect policy makers who will lead us in redressing this existential issue.

Discussion

• Where are we falling short as a nation in recognizing and accepting responsibility?

• What can you do individually to address this?