Responsibility

I want to badly to claim responsibility for my own life.

But there are so many things that are out of my control.

And I don't just mean big things like the year I was born or the weather today.

I mean that my emotions, my thoughts, and my actions, too, often feel out of my control.

I'm never sure why I feel, think, or do what I do.

Yet there must be a way to claim responsibility for all of these things.

I must claim responsibility for not only my actions, but my thoughts and feelings too.

But this is a tough task.

I have decided, however, that it has something to do with self-knowledge.

To claim responsibility for my feelings is to claim that I understand myself.

To claim responsibility for my thoughts is to claim that I understand myself.

But it is a retroactive sort of responsibility.

Because sometimes I do something in a moment and I don't understand it at the time. Then years later I can say 'aha, I understand why I did this. I can now say that I was indeed responsible for that feeling/thought/action.' Responsibility is something that is often claimed after the fact.

Responsibility has something to do with retroactivity.

Thus responsibility has something to do with narrative.

Thus responsibility has something to do with history.

And I suspect that responsibility has something to do with self-creation.

This is a short essay I hope to write: "Responsibility and Self-Knowledge"