Responsiblity

I was thinking earlier today of a conversation I had with my grandson a few months ago about how you are only responsible for your own happiness and no one else's, and from the look he gave, I knew he didn't think the same.

But if, in fact, we are responsible for someone's happiness, isn't that a dangerous thing?  Because what if we decide down the road that we do not want to be their friend/lover/spouse anymore?  And what if they don't see it that way? What if they then do something stupid, like start drinking or doing drugs, or even hurt someone, or worse, kill someone or themselves?  Does that make us responsible for the things they did because we didn't love them anymore?

I am of the firm belief that we are responsible for ourselves, and only our selves. (This, of course, is not including your children or aging parents, etc, in that genre.)  But my actions are my own, and I am responsible for them; for what I say, for what I do, for where I go, for how I act. If I happen to make someone happy, then that's great. People have made me happy in my life, but they didn't have to and it wasn't their responsibility. And if they have made me sad, and there have been some, some they were responsible for by hurting me deliberately, and some it was just my own fault for believing something I wanted to believe.

By the same token, you can be responsible for someone's pain if you did it in a deliberate way, and you should own up to it.  But I don't think not loving someone, even if they love you, is not.  It's just one of those sad facts of life unfortunately.

So then I was thinking, does this make us responsible for our own destiny? Part of me says yes, but then part of me says no, because things can happen that are beyond our control. But then it is up to us to change it and make lemonade out of the lemons handed to us.

A lot of times responsibility can kinda suck.  Having to make decisions that you might not want to make, having to go to work and make money to live day-to-day, even just trying to eat right.

Sometimes though I just get tired of being responsible...I want to be wild and free and do what I want to do without a second thought. But I guess this is what I get for being almost 60.