Excerpt from a drama I am watching. Drive for Life.
(Father is a successful business man and son helps out in the company. But the son made a big mistake which caused the whole empire to crumble. In an angry confrontation, the father and son had a face-off)
Son
I will take responsibility for everything that I have done even though I was duped. I will do everything to take responsibility for this mistake.
Father
Responsibility? By hiding? By denying? By pushing the blame onto another person? Listen, son. One can be failure in business, that's fine. But one cannot be failure in life. Responsibility? Pushing the blame onto another person even though he pulled a quick one on you is called responsibility? You made the decision....then face the music. That's called responsibility.
I can build another empire. But I cannot build another life for my son.
***
The point of the whole post is this....human beings make mistakes. ALL OF US. We spill milk, we fall. We make the wrong decisions, we cry. But taking responsibility for our own mistakes is part of growing up, older and wiser....part of growing as a person. It's normal for us to automatically push all the blame to someone else when something goes wrong. "He tricked me". Or "I thought....."
But no, life is not like that. In order to take responsibility, we have to say "Yes, I made a mistake. I am truly sorry about that. I will do everything I can to ratify the matter and ensure that it won't happen again".
I want to teach my kids the same thing. That human beings make mistakes....we're human beings and it's OK to make mistakes. It's REALLY OK. People will get angry and mad at you but as long as you face the music, you're doing the right thing. Kids have the tendency to push responsibility onto something else....someone else.
Teaching the kids how to take responsibility is a tough task because we are not perfect. But it's our job. Sigh....life is tough, isn't it?
I was kind of a little sad when I read the news about this - there will be no live-in Indonesian maids in Malaysia anymore . There are pros and cons to having a live-in maid, as with everything else, but for us, we enjoyed more pros than cons. Back then, when my kids were little, we brought in a family of maids to help with...well, just about everything, and we were like two families merged into one. They ate what we ate, we sleep, they sleep, we shop, they shop, they joke, we laugh, we joke, they laugh...for me, the maid I hired was more like a sister and side-kick to me. For that few years, I was dependent on her to mind-read my schedule and when I need or don't need help. She picked things up quickly and we ended up having lots of moments whereby we were in sync. Today, two of them are on my Facebook and we were gleefully chatting over Facebook Messenger since they've just discovered the wonders of the Internet and Social Media. Since we were more like partners in crim...
Comments
as you said, acknowledging ones mistakes and admitting it IS OK. Sad to say that it is a very difficult trait to learn and not many people are willing to do that.
People maaa....got so many types. If everyone were to be of equal thinking and actions than there wouldn't be any war or confrontations liao.
Neways, I seriously doubt that its gonna happen....naaaa way in hell!!!!
sad to say i never did this until much later in life....learning how to say 'sorry, it's my fault. i will try not to do it again'. unless i feel very strongly about something lah. cannot be a pushover as well.
I tell my kids that all the time. At the moment, I don't think it's totally registered inside their brains but little by little....I hope they will remember all I teach them.