Firstly, take Honest and imagine it has to be compliant with a code of conduct in order to sanction blame. If Honest is open to interpretation and has no set of procedures to follow then it cannot be accused of non-compliance when blame is misplaced. Versions of honesty conceal the ultimate truth, appearing as lame excuses, and the quest to appoint blame correctly leads to a motion to dismiss.
So in the belief that the truth will surface, the next question to consider is whose truth will be right? All the evidence points to the accused but what Blame didn’t take into account was that the accused had its own piece of evidence up its sleeve and another heap of blame was being catapulted back. Blame gets swung back and forth and, as a result, the dizziness begins to cloud its judgement and, depending on what or who is on trial, the motion to dismiss probably couldn’t come quickly enough.
Blame is constantly being held to account and gets involved in a range of conscious or unconscious cover-ups. These can take place in a courtroom, in a relationship, at work, in business and, low and behold, everyone has the capacity to look in the mirror and blame the reflection for being a victim of mistaken identity!
Blame has raised a few valid points so far and it would seem it is a rather pragmatic character. Although it is led by you, and has to do as it’s told, I also get the sense that it is a clever accomplice and knows whether it is acting inappropriately. Maybe Blame has an ability to transmit its concerns back to you, in the hope that you will reassess your original line of thinking, when blame is misdirected.
Sometimes Blame is made redundant. It is asked to sit on the outer edge of the circle that is formed by a group of people who have been given permission to lay Blame to rest. Organisations that have the resources to invest in employee development and improve morale in the workplace will be doing so in order to prevent a blame culture from developing. Blame is a negative practice when it is allowed to run riot, and has to be explored in order to be understood and managed.
However, putting Blame back in the jar and screwing the lid on tight doesn’t resolve underlying conflict that may find another way to surface. It is much better to have Blame sitting (restrained if necessary) in the circle where it can join in conversations and air its opinion, as good communication is half the battle. If Blame can learn to be diplomatic and exchange feedback using self-control, then barriers can come down as two sides to a story are explored. Blame is open to changing its mind when it has a good reason to back track and is more than happy to share responsibility if the other side to a story can restore harmony with no hard feelings.
In a team environment, I think the idea is to move the team members on from a place of appointing individual blame that is associated with an unsuccessful activity and, instead, become collectively accountable. Even if there is room for Blame to be assigned, the preferred option above encourages people to look at what lessons can be learned in order to make the activity successful in the future. In this instance, ‘deferred success’ will escort Failure and Blame off the premises.
Blame observes and gets restless in these situations. It doesn’t mean to be defensive but it doesn’t always understand why it has to share the blame when it isn’t at fault. Blame has to learn that sharing responsibility in an overall objective, especially at work, may be part and parcel of keeping the peace and keeping your friends (even if this concept sounds like blackmail!). Blame came to the conclusion that it wasn’t suited to the corporate world which wasn’t too impressed with Blame either.
It is understandable why Blame gets upset because it is taught to be true to itself and challenge but it feels it has to change its behaviour when it goes to work and then again, when it returns home or sits among friends. Regardless of whether it is actually right or wrong, or finds itself in places it shouldn’t be, this doesn’t change the fact it feels it has to constantly adapt. Maybe Blame could take a few lessons from Judgement and Honest which both agree that it isn’t always ‘what is said’ but ‘how it is said’. If Blame gets confused at times it could be down to a lack of direction.
Sometimes Blame is known for saying what it has on its mind. So when it presents the facts as supporting evidence, it doesn’t understand why it’s cautioned. A good example of this can be illustrated between two siblings who are having a quarrel. The parent pipes up and tells them both to stop arguing. One sibling defends its honour and states, “But it’s not my fault, he pushed me first”. The parent turns around and says, “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, just stop arguing”. Well… does it really matter whose fault it is and would the argument have drawn to an amicable conclusion had it been mediated in a constructive manner? It didn’t matter whose fault it was to the parent but the sibling under attack reckoned it was important!
Blame started pacing the perimeter edge of the science lab trying not to sulk, wondering what was the point of being honest if that didn’t lead to justice! Honest, who was an expert in experiencing rejection, just added to Blame’s confusion by advising it to be humble and accept that the truth isn’t always outwardly revealed, but sometimes knowing and living by your own truth, which exists inside of you, will be enough. Blame wasn’t entirely convinced. It felt that fluffy responses are usually a sign of not knowing the answer, but coming from Honest you’d think they’d be well founded.
It thought long and hard about the message recently delivered by Honest, which was also insinuating that instances existed where it was desirable to accept a share of the blame – even if it wasn’t your fault. It had learnt that there were usually two sides to a story and a ‘two-sides-to-the-story’ argument unfortunately allows both sides to be right, until one of them is found guilty. Blame is often open to interpretation. If humbleness is too hard to swallow then Blame is asked to lie low and behave unless a twist in the storyline surfaces and pulls Blame in one direction or the other!
As Blame parked itself on the workbench, thinking retrospectively about life, it started playing around with the Bunsen burner that clearly displayed a warning sign: ‘Not to be used unattended’. Fair comment, it thought. Blame could accept that if it blatantly did something silly then there would be no denying it was to blame, especially if it got burnt. Edging away carefully, concerned that pointing its finger in the wrong direction was enough to set the burner alight, Blame often compared itself to a misunderstood character out of a comic book. Sometimes it found its fingers smouldering even when there was no sign of fire, and skipping science class to avoid bumping into PJ still landed it in trouble. And landed it in detention.
Once, it took a course, studied hard and failed the exam and had no idea who to blame so it decided that the teacher hadn’t done their job properly! The teacher challenged and Blame reciprocated their kind gesture by challenging them back in return. Despite all the studying, something else outside of Blame’s awareness had to have been involved. That’s it – it’s a no-brainer – the test was too hard, the marking guidelines far too ambiguous, so who can take responsibility on this occasion? Where is Blame going to sit now and can it be assigned to the exam writers? After all, they wrote it and evidently didn’t write it very well! Blame recalls pacing the corridors up and down, in limbo at the time, pleading for an alternative assignment because it couldn’t work out where to lie.
Who or what is actually at fault when these sorts of situations arise? In many instances, there seems little evidence that an offence has been committed. During that period of time, Blame studied hard, the teacher taught well and the examiners marked in accordance with a set of guidelines. Everyone was compliant. A ‘failure to comply notice’ could only be served if Honest was under scrutiny but there was no indication that it was at fault. Sometimes things just happen. Sometimes one of the mixed seeds in the pack doesn’t develop particularly well and something obscure, that we don’t understand, grows out of shape. We don’t know that for certain and so we learn to accept that Blame is homeless once in a while.
I am writing this s
ection giggling through a grimace of pity for this character. Blame is endearing yet vulnerable. If it can’t be assigned, then it has to bite its tongue and consider looking on the bright side… Maybe it was time to walk a different path if this one was clearly going to be too disheartening. Why make its life more difficult and go through the humiliation of resitting an exam that could equally turn out to be a waste of time? No, it was certain that it wasn’t cut out for academia. There was an upside to this experience. If it could blame itself for this glitch in its education, sometime in the future, and reserve it for a period of reflection in a time of self-doubt, it would be able to secure a couple of months in sheltered housing! Blame just needs to lie somewhere in order to secure accommodation. In fact, practising self-pity (when it didn’t have anything else to blame) meant it could go and play with Guilt, in its free time, to see if it had anything else to explore while it was in a self-deprecating frame of mind.
Guilt can encourage us to keep on blaming ourselves, in the present, for creating a situation in the past that appears to still be having an impact on our lives. Carrying the blame (founded or otherwise) through into another point of your life at a later date is neither right nor wrong and it would be flippant of me to say differently.
Past experiences which involve ‘mistakes’ can have their place in the here and now. When we learn to keep the emotions previously associated with them detached in the present moment, we can use the learnings as a result of those experiences to our advantage. This does not trivialise their importance, after all they were a part of our lives. However, in order for them to serve any purpose now, as you recall the experience, they must remain less emotive. No doubt you will have enough emotions to deal with, surrounding your new experience, never mind expending energy on pacifying the past – again.
When we recall a time, either recently or in the distant past, whereby we made a poor judgement, it is likely to surface when something in our current world isn’t going too well and we haven’t quite worked out how to deal with it. While we take the time to get our ‘sensible’ head on – the one that will help us to find a solution – we can regress. Whatever it is that isn’t going to plan now may or may not be connected with an incident from the past, but our mind wanders and frantically tries to find a connection and something to blame. A couple of things can happen if it does do this.
When we track a connection down we can press the replay button and remain in a negative state that relives the past. The past is unable to make any positive contribution to your present circumstances, because it is quite literally behind the times and you haven’t brought it up to date. If you don’t offer those past experiences, which manage to push their way to the forefront of your mind, any form of rehabilitation, then why bring them back up again? If you are looking to find excuses for a present malfunction in your life – underneath the floorboards – then it sounds like you have reunited with the Chinese whispers from your last voyage as you worked alongside Darkness. They will tell you stories.
Alternatively, we can trace our steps and look for a link to our past that will be unsentimental and use it to help us find a solution. In doing so, we can recognise the errors we made back then, avoid making them again and learn to do things a different way. If we are going to blame ourselves then we may as well get something positive back as we put ourselves through the mill, one more time.
The past could be very recent! Something may have happened last week and you think, had you done it differently, you wouldn’t have ended up in this mess this week. Even if you did what you thought was right at the time we have a habit of overturning it when something else comes along to undermine the original decision. This is a clear situation in which Blame is misbehaving!
When the past has nothing new to say, that hasn’t been said already, and can’t help you anymore, shut it out or tell it to be quiet until you have dealt with any consequences requiring your attention as a result of the decisions made. Besides, how much time can you afford to waste now colluding with Blame? You have more important and current things on your mind.
It is OK to accept responsibility and admit to making mistakes, or shall we call them ‘your less than finer moments’. Process them – work through them – then do something positive to keep moving forward. Blame may be linked to your history but once it has made any overdue contribution just ask it to camp elsewhere. Find the arrow sign on your map that states: You are here. Knowing where you are is a good place to be and offers you a recognisable place to move on from. In time, you will only sense how far you’ve come without the need to look over your shoulder.
It was nearing the end of detention and Blame was feeling in a good place too! Despite being in an ideal environment to explore the cause and effect of the big bang theory, it knew that it couldn’t explore all perceptions of Blame in one detention. It had always wondered if the Big Bang Theory was to blame for lifeforms appearing on earth or if something else was responsible. Blame is usually associated with something that is perceived to have gone wrong. In this case it would depend upon whether someone thought that the formation of the world, as we know it, was indeed a good thing or something that went terribly wrong! Blame would have to look at its own family tree, to see if it was involved, and that would definitely entail looking back through history and making some links. Blame could go on to become a historian if science didn’t work out… so far it wasn’t faring well!
Blame had really enjoyed its hour in detention after all, and thought for a moment about how Guilt had been previously associated with a fact or a feeling. Blame could identify with being torn between the two, agreeing it functioned in much the same way. Sometimes a person was to blame for a jolly good reason and other times only felt they were to blame until they realised they weren’t! If Guilt sticks around long enough too, it will embellish the truth (the perceived truth) and Blame will be remanded in custody until the person’s imagination has created a new version of the truth and set Blame free.
The million dollar question is: How long do you carry the blame around once you have accepted that something is your fault? You are not asking to be exonerated but the healing process has to begin. Usually we look in a mirror at some point during the day. This may be intentional or unintentional, providing an opportunity to make eye contact with the only person in the whole wide world that will be around for as long as you are alive and knows your truth: yourself. Blame will come face to face with its opponent as it stands in front of the mirror which will help transcend any limitations imposed by the self. Sometimes things are not your fault and threadbare accusations can simply fall and rest in another place.
In life, sometimes we have an idea that we could fall without being pushed but hope we stay upright, with or without crutches. Sometimes we trip over something that got in the way and caught us unawares. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that we often set ourselves up to fall. We go about our daily affairs and we brace ourselves for the journey across the undulating landscape, along our path. No one likes to fall but words get said and things get done that create an imbalance which, at the time, cannot be immediately restored. The restoration part has to be worked on as you attempt to get back up, and it can take minutes through to years depending on how far you fell and how strong you are physically and emotionally.
Blame knew there would be repercussions from playing truant and probably set itself up for a fall. It accepted the blame after it had spent a little time trying to avoid it! Once it was caught by the headmistress, it had to take responsibility and deal with the consequences. It was healthier to move on and swallow its pride; otherwise it would only become a victim, enslaved by its own inefficiencies and feel sorry for itself, forever more!
As you have probably discovered by now, having witnessed Blame engaging in an hour-long session of profound reflective practice, it is a reasonably level-headed character and didn’t fall too far on this occasion. It found that experimenting with its f
eelings was productive and this particular experience was great for self-development.
If something we are feeling is disturbing us then we need to change the feeling so we are no longer disturbed. Blame is a natural reaction but if all of our natural reactions run around freely then they will find someone or something else to disturb. Not all of our natural reactions will be negative and they may well influence in a positive way. Remember ‘natural’ doesn’t mean it is always OK – it just means it occurs.
F*O*R*G*I*V*E
The Multi-Step Equation
Forgive didn’t profess to be ‘up there’ sitting alongside Pythagoras and Archimedes but it did see itself as a philosophical mathematician. Philosophy didn’t seem to do either of those famous chaps any harm as they hopscotched numerically through life, shining light on each new discovery.
Forgive is an immortal character and has witnessed a multitude of sins unfold throughout the ages. It has been privy to secrets and sadness, which at times forced it to question if the forgiveness it was dishing out was unconditional or if that could be challenged. Surely it is down to personal choice? It may take someone a long time to arrive at a decision to forgive. However, sometimes little thought may go into making this decision and no sooner one is made, forgiveness is later retracted. This is when something just doesn’t add up!
Returning to the blackboard, Forgive makes further attempts to understand why the maths logic it applied earlier didn’t produce the intended results. Maybe it got the methodology wrong or it simply put an integer in the wrong place. In maths an integer is a whole number but it is also something that is complete in itself. Forgive wondered if a part of the decision-making process, that led to forgiveness, was incomplete. If the decision was made simply because it seemed the right thing to do, then the person may not have been thinking holistically. They didn’t take all their feelings into consideration and this oversight had left a hole in the formula. They imagined that forgiving would help them have closure and feel complete. Sometimes it just takes longer to figure out how to forgive and mean it.
Emotional Sandwiches Page 21