Personal Responsibility

I keep seeing events illustrating this topic being acted out in the world around me lately, ad nauseum, so I figure it's time for a post about it. I'm really coming to the conclusion that most people no longer understand what it means to be responsible for themselves. The number of excuses that people make to try to squirm out of their responsibilities is truly staggering. And then there are the ones who change their story in the middle because the first one didn't make any sense, and see absolutely nothing unusual or wrong with that. (For example, my father today who first said he hadn't given my grandmother lunch yet at 2pm because she hadn't had a bowel movement yet, and then when it was pointed out that didn't make any sense changed his story to that she had just finished eating breakfast at 11:30 because he couldn't get her to wake up enough to eat the food he gave her at 9:30... conveniently shifting the blame for why he didn't do something he was supposed to away from himself and onto the very person he is supposed to be taking care of.) I'm really truly getting sick of this trend. Why do people not accept that they are responsible for their own actions? Worse yet, why do they sometimes try to plead ignorance of the repercussions of their actions or inactions; when not taking the time to find out the information that they should have is another choice that they have made and are quietly abdicating responsibility for?

And yet, at the same time as I'm disgusted by these attitudes in others, I have to wonder if there is some sort of lesson I'm supposed to learn from it, since I see it so often these days. Do I display any of these traits in my own life? I'm not sure yet, but I'm definately going to be thinking about that and taking an internal inventory of my actions and attitudes. And if I do avoid personal responsibility in any aspects of my life, for any reason, I intend to change that.

While I'm at it, what does everyone else think? Sometimes things like this are easiest to see from an outside point of view.