A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his responsibilities, the director of his life. I wish. I wish a man can be a director of his responsibilities and therefore his life follows the script. Alas, I can only be a master-gardener. Responsibilities lie all around. They are like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight. Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it’s addressed to someone else. But do we understand the commitment we make towards responsibilities? I’m not sure about others. And I am not sure of myself either. At least I WAS; don’t know if I am yet. Today I believe differently. I believe that every responsibility implies a right; every obligation, an opportunity; and every duty, a possession. We really need to restore the full meaning of that old word: responsibility. It is the other side of rights.
Do we assume responsibilities? Again, I am not sure. Not today. I WAS! The best years of my life I decided my responsibilities, and happily bestowed on myself those endowed. I did not blame them on my mother, the ecology, or the president. I had known that I was in control of my own destiny. And I believed in participating collaboratively in weaving the social fabric; and I thought that those who endowed the responsibilities (that I happily fulfilled) would therefore all participate in patching the fabric when it developed holes. I thought. And I thought. And that thought remained in my mind. It never saw it’s reflection in the real world. The world where we think with hopes or fears or wishes rather than with our minds.
Well, wisdom is after all the only the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk. My godfather told me one day “Put a grain of boldness into everything you do”. I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older. But be yourself. He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself. Nevertheless, all said and done, I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I’ve written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part and fulfilling my commitments to responsibilities.
