Standing Up and Being Counted

¡Hola! Everybody...
the good weather is here and that means I spend less time at home. Had dinner in the city with some friends last night. This week there are two free concerts I will be attending (weather permitting). This weekend, I’m headed back to Boston for a visit.

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-=[ Accountability ]=-

I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes. I had one thousand sixty.

-- Imelda Marcos

Mistakes were made...

-- Standard Issue PR Evasive Measure

Accountability! Now there's a concept that's hard to find in use these days. LOL! For those that are too young to remember, Imelda Marcos was the wife of a Philippine dictator who was eventually ousted from power. In the ensuing mess, it was discovered that as the nation's people suffered abject poverty, this couple lived a life of luxury hard to imagine. One of the themes of this story arose from the discovery of the many shoes Imelda Marcos possessed.

As human beings, we all share the impulse to justify ourselves and avoid responsibility for any actions that turn out to be harmful, immoral, or just plain stupid. While we all like to point fingers at others and public figures, most of us will never be in the public spotlight when we lay our own eggs or the skeletons in our closet rattle. Our decisions will most likely not affect the lives of millions of people, but whether on a grand scale or our personal canvas, most of us find it difficult, if not impossible, to say, “I was wrong, I made a terrible mistake.” The higher the emotional, financial, moral stakes -- the harder it is.

Recently, Dick Cheney actually said mistakes were made with regard to the response to the 9/11 attacks. Check out the language: Mistakes were made.

What mistakes and by whom? Shred the constitution, commit war crimes, and lie deliberately to go to war and all you can say is Mistakes were made... ? Where is the accountability and leadership in language oozing with passivity?

I differentiate between responsibility and accountability -- I think they are two different things. To be accountable for something means that one may not be responsible for a situation, but has decided to be accountable for it. An example might be deciding not to add one’s own litter to an already littered street. That was an example taught to me by my mother when I was a little boy. She saw me dropping a candy wrapper onto the pavement and when I protested that the street was already dirty (we lived in the ghetto, duh!), her answer has stayed with me: It’s dirty because everybody thinks as you do! To this day, I don’t litter. LOL!

Another example would be understanding not being responsible for a disease but being accountable for maintaining a lifestyle that helps to arrest that disease. That understanding right there is a major part of my life. I try to apply it to all my affairs: accountability versus responsibility.

Imelda never got it right: it wasn’t the number of shoes she possessed (though stealing from the masses and then throwing it away on trivial matters while many died from starvation is an unsettling moral issue). The point wasn’t the number of shoes but the utter lack of accountability for her actions -- that was the issue.

I have witnessed many people get stuck on the responsibility side of things to the point that they never get past that. Even when you are responsible for an action, it is not enough to just admit to the responsibility, one has to own the issue and become accountable for it.

Accountability demands that our commitment compels us to stand up and be “counted” -- to take action. This is an integral part of change and growth. By releasing the purely moral issue, one then gains power to become a moral agent in changing actions/ behaviors/ situations. Imelda took responsibility for the one thousand sixty shoes she owned; she just never became accountable for them. LOL!

Love,

Eddie