It all depends on me

It all depends on me. The thought is simple but I have a complicated story found on the net. You do need to read it carefully, to appreciate the depth in this story.

This story is about a Jew man named Elazar ben Durdaya. Elazar had become addicted to allurements of lust and passion. One Day, he was told by someone, "Elazar, you are beyond salvation, there is no World to Come for you." Something about what she said or the way she said it, shook Elazar. He was driven by an overwhelming desire to return to a Godly path, if only God would forgive him. He cried out to the mountains and hills and said, "Please, plead my case for me, ask God to have mercy on me." But they responded, "We must plead for ourselves." ." He turned heavenward and cried, "Please, heavens and earth, intercede on my behalf." But they too answered, “We must ask mercy for ourselves.” He begged to Sun, Moon and Sky and still received the same response.

Elazar fell to the ground and cried from the depths of his soul. After a time he rose and spoke the truest words that had ever crossed his lips, "The matter rests entirely with me, the responsibility is all mine." And that moment his soul left his body. A heavenly voice then rang out and said “Elazar, your repentance has been accepted, you are worthy of the World to Come.”

Elazar was trying to make amends, but he was also trying to shift the blame. When he asked the mountains and hills to intervene, he was really thinking, "It's my parents' fault that I turned out like this. They didn't discipline me enough, they didn't have the time to invest in me, they spoiled me." But this plea was rejected. He turned to heaven and earth, both symbols of the society that he was raised in. "It was the environment I grew up in, my friends, my school… Everybody was doing it. It wasn't my fault." But this defense wasn't answered either. He tried again, and turned to the sun and moon, both symbols of affluence. "It was the glitz and the glamour of how I grew up. There was so much emphasis on the material world, I couldn't escape it." But again, nothing. In his last attempt of self-defense, he blamed his destiny to be how he is, but to no avail. Finally after a cathartic cry he found the strength to look inward. He realized that he couldn't shift the blame to anyone else. "It's all my fault," he admitted, "I am the only one truly responsible for my behavior." And in that moment he merited eternal life.

In modern era, there is a Peanuts cartoon where the authoritarian Lucy is busy handing out to her friends lists of their faults & imperfections. When challenged as to what right she has to do this, she responds, "I want to make this a better world for me to live in." We live in a "me" society. Sometimes it seems as if we live in a culture of victimization where it is always someone else's fault. How easy it is to rationalize my mistakes and blame circumstances "beyond my control" for errors of my own creation. The self-centered syndrome becomes a norm for those who find it natural to "pass the buck" and place the blame on others.

More often than not, this is what we do in our professional lives too. We are so engrossed in our day to day work, that instead of trying to sort out problem ourselves, we choose to externalize the problem to other people or circumstances. So much so, that we almost take assumptions in other people’s functions – “Boss will never approve it”, “XYZ team is too lazy to work out on this new project”, “ABC team continues to send crappy data”, “Team is filled up with defensive people” – Aren’t these a few comments that we carelessly make to show our helplessness to reduce our pain points?

Some of it is true. May be there are many things that are beyond our control and will continue to give us pain in our day to day functioning. But the question really is “Are we putting enough efforts from our own side?”. Can you cross your heart and say that “I have not been able to solve this problem because I could not have done anything else about it”? Possibly not. The next question is, whether we have defined our pain areas or not. Because its so easy to shirk the responsibility by externalizing any issue, we continue to work like we are, continue with the pain areas , without even thinking of the possible solutions of the problems. Across the various meetings over my career i have realised that the inidividuals identified the problem, offered the solution and worked on resolving them. I only helped in putting a structure to their thoughts. The solution was well within them.

So next time you complain about anything – Look within, the answer probably lies there! Or think about Elazar ben Durdaya and how he got his salvation.