The Power of Responsibility

The Power of Responsibility

The first responsibilities we face in life have a special sort of charm to them, as much for the enlivening sense of power they bestow, as for the cage into which we find our youthful spirit brusquely guided.  And though it is true that from this moment our feelings begin to grow past the naive importance of youth, this new found maturity holds something ancient within it.  

If we face the sun in inexperience, we lack the light to know the ignorance it imposes on us, so when we begin to hold on to our faults, we find that responsibility is a means of freedom.  It is a primal state where we can finally call things by what they are; the act of putting a halter on a horse, buckling the saddle, or rubbing down its legs, do not become familiar until we are responsible for them.  

But when the familiarity of those responsibilities finally strikes, it tends to languish within the present task.  We do not see that everything looks out of that same moment, from that same power.  That is the moment we begin to see the origin, the grand present, the arbitrary look of our ancestors.  That is the true responsibility, seeing power open before us, power that does not require any responsibility, a power that is happening right now, even if we don't want it to.

Douglas Thornton