Shifting Responsibility

Sometimes it's difficult to keep your mouth shut when you know someone doesn't have their facts straight. I listened to Mark's dad talk about how the British National Health Service (NHS) has abandoned him. No one even bothers to see if he can walk. (If you haven't walked in a year and a half, the odds are not in your favor.) No one bothers to give him physical therapy to improve his chances of walking. It sounds really pitiful. But he leaves out the part where after six weeks of physical therapy, he told them in no uncertain (and somewhat rude) terms that he wasn't going to do it any more and that they needn't bother coming back. So they didn't. I don't blame them. They're not obligated to withstand verbal abuse. 

Plus, there are a number of events where his recollection and Mark's differ significantly. I won't go there. And since I wasn't there, I believe my husband's account. I know that it sometimes takes a good deal of constraint for him not to be confrontational about it. Although we're both at that stage in life where we realize that being confrontational is not typically beneficial. But after thinking about it, I've concluded that there are people who are unable or unwilling to accept responsibility for their circumstances. It was the other guy's fault. You were clumsy and fell, but I was pushed. It's not quite the same as recognizing and accepting that while some events were out of your control, many of the circumstances and situations you find yourself in are the result (direct or indirect) of decisions you made. And if you tell yourself the same lie often enough, it starts to sound like the truth. (We can't fool anyone quite as easily as we fool ourselves.)

But then I suppose we're all guilty of putting our own spin on our own story. To some degree or another, we rewrite our histories so that any negative outcomes are attributable to someone else, assuming the negatives can't be completely eliminated. We paint the picture so that any reasonable person would do what we did - there was no viable alternative so there could have been no other outcome and we can feel good, (or vindicated, or victimized, or whatever it is we want to feel).