Accept Responsibility for your Actions

 

Disclaimer: The story I’m about to tell is not mine but was gotten from www.moralstories.org

Once upon a time, an old man spread rumours that his neighbour was a thief. As a result, the young man was arrested. Days later the young man was proven innocent. After being released, the man felt humiliated as he walked to his home. He sued the old man for wrongly accusing him.

In court, the old man told the Judge, “They were just comments, didn’t harm anyone.” The judge, before passing sentence on the case, told the old man, “Write all the things you said about him on a piece of paper. Cut them up and on the way home, throw the pieces of paper out. Tomorrow, come back to Hear the sentence”.

The next day, the judge told the old man, “Before receiving the Sentence, you will have to go out and gather all the pieces of paper that you threw out yesterday”. The old man said, “I can’t do that! The wind must have spreads them and I won’t Know where to find them”.

The judge then replied, “The same way, simple comments may destroy the honour of a man to such an extent that one is not able to fix it. The old man realized his mistake and asked for forgiveness”.

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The old man’s comment “They were just comments, didn’t harm anyone” is where the blog post is centred on. The rumour the old man had spread had done a lot of damage to his neighbour. For starters, the neighbour was humiliated. When taken to court, instead of the old man to accept that what he had done was wrong, instead of him to take responsibility for his wrong action, he decided to deflect it. He wanted to put it in such a way that no matter how anyone looks at it, it’s not his fault, hence “They were just comments, didn’t harm anyone”. The funny thing is that, he didn’t accept he was wrong until he got a demonstration (with the paper by the judge). Thank God sef he even realized his mistake and asked for forgiveness.

There are lots of us like the old man. We can’t accept responsibility for the things we have done. Instead we look for someone else to blame or we make up flimsy excuses to justify why we shouldn’t be responsible for anything. That’s just wrong. If you did something wrong, don’t become so defensive, looking for who to pin your wrong doing on. It’s selfish and speaks badly of you. There’s nothing wrong with making your wrong right and apologizing too.

Pulled this from my instagram. BTW, follow me on instagram @__nakas

In the story, it’s the old man not taking responsibility for his actions of spreading rumour which caused the humiliation of his neighbour. Other examples could be someone punishing others because they were punished, someone not taking care of another man’s thing because they feel it’s not theirs, hence not their responsibility. One example I hear of is parents not caring about their kid’s welfare or school fees because in their own time, they didn’t have anyone to take them to school or because they paid their own school fees, so they feel their kids must do same. For goodness sake, take care of your kids, they are your responsibility. It’s one thing when there’s no money to take care of them, it’s another thing when you lazy around and just refuse to take care of your kids.

In conclusion, whatever it is you do, wrong, right, whatsoever, take responsibility for your actions and stop making up excuses. Don’t blame John, don’t blame Janet don’t blame your mom, don’t blame your dad, don’t blame your society, don’t blame anyone!

💕

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