What has our character become? Where can we find those honest qualities in a person that stand out? Is the quality of a person declining as the years and powers of social media grow? It’s a disconcerting thing. The sad part is, the people who are exhibiting such behaviors are people who should know better. Adults who have good educations. Prominent media companies. Not the young children you would think exhibit such behavior.
Our situations, while not entirely in our control, do have room for us to exhibit the personal accountability. Our reactions are very much our choice. We can own situations, or we can sit and moan in a corner and complain. The personal accountability comes in with how we either A) Got into these situations or B) Make them our own or C) Get out of these situations. Take, for example, picking a discipline of study to major in. The personal accountability is there in that it is a free choice to pick a major. The knowledge of which majors generally produce more lucrative careers, which ones generally produce stable livings, and which ones are not inclined to be big money-makers.
There are many actions we can take daily which exhibits our personal accountability. Showing decorum on social media is one way. Anybody can go on a stream-of-consciousness-type rant on Facebook or Twitter. However, it is no secret that companies, while in the hiring process, are known to look through potential candidate’s social media accounts. It is no secret that companies have social media policies for their own employees. Generally, when starting a new company, we have to sign paperwork acknowledging such policies. Consequently, it should be no surprise when such policies are enforced.
Look at our behavior in public. We can choose to be or to not be a good, decent person in our day to day lives. These actions which we freely take, have positive and negative consequences. I can choose to make a fool of myself yelling to some poor part-time worker that their mask policy is ridiculous, and become the next local celebrity for all the wrong reasons. Or I can behave properly, and either wear a mask and shop somewhere else and make everyone, including myself, happy.
Take our behavior with police. This has been a touchy subject lately, but if people want to have a conversation, then listen up. By and large, negative police interactions can be solved by not committing crimes and complying with the people in authority. It’s not always a perfect situation, and I am not saying that all the world’s problems could be solved by a single shift in perspective. That being said, it is also not a secret that police will use force if necessary or if they find themselves in harm’s way. I wouldn’t ride my bike in the street in front of a speeding 18-wheeler. I may have the right-of-way, but I’m still going to lose that fight just about every time. My personal accountability is staying on the side of the road until the potentially dangerous situation is gone. If I am pulled over, whether or not I actually committed a traffic violation, it would be crazy for me to try and run or fight off an officer who is doing their job. Unfortunately, this is the situation we see more often then not. And it is completely avoidable.
We all should be acting like adults. We all have the capacity to. We all know that there are consequences, positive and negative, which exist for every action we take. We can be sympathetic to the things outside of the control of others, but we should not accept people who do not own up to their situations and refuse to act accordingly. People who know better should act better, and we should hold them to these standards. More importantly, we should hold ourselves to higher standards than we would hold anyone else.
Bayou Observant 