Tag: accountability

Folly and Redemption

On a chilly January night, the Jacksonville Jaguars and Los Angeles Chargers took the field in North Florida.

It was a National Football League playoff showdown, featuring two compelling teams led by rising stars.

A great game was in store. Or was it?

The game got off to an inauspicious start. Jacksonville quarterback Trevor Lawrence threw an interception on the second play of the game.

The misfire put Los Angeles in prime position to score. The Chargers put a touchdown on the board less than a minute later.

This was hardly the start Jaguars fans were expecting. But they surely didn’t expect what was still to come.

On Jacksonville’s next possession, Lawrence threw another interception. The Chargers took advantage of the blunder, scoring again.

Lawrence went on to throw a third interception later in the first quarter, and fourth in the second quarter.

By the time halftime arrived, the Chargers led the Jaguars by a score of 27 to 7. Lawrence was directly responsible for 17 points of that 20-point deficit.

It looked like the Jacksonville’s season was about to end with a thud. But another plot twist was in the offing.

The Jaguars came onto the field with renewed purpose in the second half. And slowly but surely, Jacksonville started chipping away at the deficit.

Lawrence stopped turning the ball over, tossing touchdown passes instead on three straight drives. And the Jaguars defense held the Los Angeles offense to three points, bending but never breaking.

With just a few minutes left, Lawrence found the ball in his hands one more time. His team trailed by two points.

Lawrence confidently led the Jacksonville offense down the field, putting them in position to kick a field goal.

The kicker drilled the attempt through the uprights with no time left on the clock. The Jaguars, improbably, won the game by a score of 31 to 30.

Their season was still alive.

In the days after this playoff football game, two narratives percolated through the media.

One claimed that the Los Angeles Chargers had choked. On the precipice of a road playoff win, they got complacent. And in doing so, they fell apart.

It was a compelling argument. Teams rarely waste 20-point halftime advantages in the NFL playoffs. Doing so requires them to squander countless opportunities, to be the architects of their own demise.

The label is sure to stick.

Even so, the more prevalent narrative from this game was that of Trevor Lawrence’s redemption. Pundits marveled at how the Jaguars signal-caller faced down adversity and led his team to a scintillating victory.

It was the stuff of Hollywood legend, it would seem. Except that it wasn’t.

You see, Lawrence hadn’t overcome adversity. He’d simply cleaned up his own mess.

His bone-headed decisions and poor throws had put Jacksonville on the brink of playoff elimination. As the leader of the team, it was his obligation to atone for his poor play.

Lawrence ultimately did that. But his second half performance was hardly the stuff of redemption.

Redemption, you see, has a distinct definition. It’s the process of getting back up when you’ve been knocked down. Of rising to the mountaintop after coming up short.

There’s a certain amount of pain intertwined with this process. There’s the haunting ache from having done your best – of having gotten so close – and finding yourself with nothing to show for it.

That ache serves as fuel to make the previously impossible, possible. That fuel is a key element of redemption. And it demands a baseline of achievement to even find a place in the tank.

What Lawrence did in the first half of that playoff game hardly counts as a baseline of achievement. He’d dug his team a deep hole through impotence, and you could hardly say that he deserved a better outcome than the one emblazoned on the scoreboard.

This was folly epitomized.

And yet, Jacksonville escaped unscathed.

Perhaps Trevor Lawrence wasn’t the only one to exhibit folly.

Yes, from a bird’s eye view, any analysis of his gridiron adventures seems silly.

This was but a game after all. Even with the hundred-million-dollar player salaries and tens of millions of TV viewers, football remains far from existential.

Yet, far from the bright lights of football fields, we’ve taken similar liberties with our pens. We’ve rebranded folly as redemption. And the implications are stark.

For such a reframe kneecaps the principles of accountability and remorse. It dulls our empathy and feeds our ego at the least suitable of times.

Indeed, if we classify our errors as chances for redemption, we fail to recognize their impact. We neglect to consider who our misdeeds hurt, and in what ways.

That collateral damage gets sidelined, deferred, ignored.

We put the humility on the back burner. We decline to make proper amends.

And as we rise from the ashes of our blunders, we recast ourselves as victims. Victims who have overcome strife on the road to achievements.

This is what happens when we tie redemption to folly. And it’s sickening.

I don’t know how we’ve gotten to this depraved reality

Perhaps we’ve internalized too many fairy tales. Perhaps we’ve taken silver linings from too many Steven King novels.

Perhaps it’s something different entirely.

Regardless, we need to open our eyes.

For when we neglect what’s now in favor of what’s next, we exacerbate our missteps. We cause the fissures of our blunders to become faults and fjords. We carry an air of entitlement, rendering ourselves too big to fail.

We lose. And everyone in our orbit suffers.

It would be far better to take our folly at face value. To accept the consequences of our mistakes and marinate in our remorse. To make amends, hat in hand.

Such habits will help foster a sense of compassion within our soul. They’ll steer us away from recklessness. They’ll provide a more sustainable path forward.

And above all that, they’ll keep us from commandeering redemption for our own grandeur. The concept can return to its rightful pedestal until we can raise ourselves up to prove worthy of its mantle.

This is how it should be. And I hope this is the way it will be.

Folly and redemption are oil and water. Let’s stop trying to mix them together.

The Blame Game

It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault.

If you were to go to a college hockey game in recent years, you were likely to hear the home fans chanting this at the opposing goalie for letting a puck fly by.

In a vacuum, this chant seems infantile. After all, the scoreboard already tells the story.

Why rub salt in the wound? Why make the goalie feel even worse for coming up short?

There is no rational explanation. And yet, the chant has lived on for years.

Some of this has to do with home ice advantage. The chant adds an element of intimidation to the proceedings, making it even more daunting for the visitors to come away victorious.

But a lot of it comes from a human obsession. An obsession in finding someone to blame.

There are few more compelling figures in our society than the scapegoat.

We worship the heroes and abhor the villains. But we depend on the scapegoats.

For these figures provide us a target for our attention. A release valve for our exasperation. A convenient excuse for why things veer off course.

Yes, we need an explanation for each hardship we face. A foil for the moments when our visions of perfection eviscerate into the murkiness of reality.

So, we look for somebody to blame.

This urge to point the finger is so prevalent that it’s practically muscle memory. We instinctively turn toward its seductive glow time and again.

At the moment we find our scapegoat, we feel relief. Our angst, confusion and vulnerability give way to the rush of adrenaline of grabbing the pitchforks and torches.

Of course, nothing on the surface has changed. The circumstances we are facing are just as they were.

But now we have a cause to rally around. A rationale for feelings of renewal.

All while someone else is left to shoulder the burden of our suffering.

There’s a prevalent school of thought. One that equates finding fault with serving karmic justice.

This is a fallacy.

For justice is blind to bias. It does not care about our feelings, or bend to the whims of our desires.

No, true justice is only about one thing: Balance.

Now, some may argue that apportioning blame restores balance. That transferring the burden of responsibility to someone at the origin of our troubles gets the universe back on track.

But reality is rarely this straightforward.

Indeed, the line between accountability and vindictive rage is often perilously narrow. And in the fog of distress, we can easily cross to the wrong side of the divide.

And so, scapegoats find themselves culpable for violations of standards that defy reality. Or wrongly accused altogether.

These are terrifying situations. They are outcomes that we don’t want to find ourselves facing.

And so, we hedge.

We hold back. We play it safe. We do all we can to reduce the risk of blowback.

This defangs us as leaders and innovators. But it also takes the worst case scenario off the table.

Or so we think.

On September 11, 2001, the world changed.

Millions watched in horror as two hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, and another plane crashed into the Pentagon near Washington.

It was the darkest day of my life — and I’m sure I’m not alone in that fact. But the days that followed weren’t much brighter.

There was an uncomfortable stillness in the air. Anxiety and uncertainty were everywhere you turned.

Then, President Bush announced that America was going after those who brought this evil to our shores. Less than a month after the attacks, the United States Army invaded Afghanistan.

At the time of the invasion, it was hard to find many who were opposed to it. We had all just lived through an attack. If we didn’t go after those who were to blame, we would invite another act of terror.

And yet, two decades later, the results of that decision are less clear cut.

The masterminds of the 9/11 attacks are just about all dead or captured by now. And yet, the war in Afghanistan wears on.

What started as an action of blame has morphed into a costly quagmire. Some of the participants in it today were not even alive when the conflict started.

Pointing the finger took us further than we’d ever hoped to go.

As I write this, we are in a new kind of crisis.

A virus with no cure has killed tens of thousands of people across America. And the mass quarantines meant to contain it have caused 30 million people to lose their jobs.

The pain and strife are catastrophic. And the devastation lies on multiple fronts.

As battle through this uncertainty, we focus our attention on one question. Who’s to blame?

Some have pointed to China, where the virus first erupted. Others have pointed to political leaders, who didn’t act quick enough to contain early cases. Others still have blamed government agencies, who botched the rollout of testing for the virus when it was still in the nascent stages of its spread.

The blame game provides us with a convenient distraction from the despair of the present reality. It provides us with prominent punching bags for us to lob our ire at.

But it is wholly misguided.

For viruses are forces of nature. They do not neatly follow the laws of human governance.

This is why there have been pandemics before. And it’s why there will be pandemics in the future.

Even if everyone we point the finger at had acted optimally, there would still have been carnage. There is no conniving terrorist in a faraway cave that wrought this devastation. Nature itself did.

And so, apportioning blame is a futile exercise. Especially in the midst of the storm.

Crises are painful. But they are powerful teachers.

And one prevailing lesson, proven time and again, that the rush to blame is futile.

Yes, accountability is important. Sometimes, it is even a matter of life and death. But it shouldn’t be our first order of business.

We must start by righting the ship. By mitigating the damage and adjusting to the circumstances. By putting survival first.

Only after the fog has lifted should we concern ourselves with determining the blame. With the crisis in our rearview, we can objectively determine who should foot the bill. Or if anyone should at all.

This truth should be self-evident in times of tribulation. In fact, it should be standard procedure even when we’re not on the brink.

It still can be.

So, let’s make it happen.

Let’s learn from our mistakes. And let’s put the blame game behind us.

There are far better uses of our time and energy. Let’s unlock them.

No Filter

How will you act with no net?

With no excuse? No safety blanket?

With no filter?

I try and answer as affirmatively as possible. For it’s the way I live my life.

I don’t pass the buck for my actions. The responsibility lies with me, and me alone.

If I make mistakes, I do what I can to rectify them. I’m not perfect, but I can strive to be better.

For I am the master of my domain. It’s critical that I assert control over my actions, even when I’m not in prime condition.

If I do something out of step because I’m sleep deprived, ill or under any number of influences, I own it. Then, I take the steps to depreciate those conditions moving forward.

Those steps could include giving up drinking, maintaining a healthier diet or adhering to a proper sleep schedule.

Regardless, the end goal is simple. I get to look upon the world without a filter. And the world gets to see the real me in real time. All the time.

Others know what to expect of me. They know how I’m likely to act.

And they know that the words coming out of my mouth — or being typed into this article — have gravitas. They have intention behind them.

I adhere to a consistent, accountably approach because I believe strongly in the One True Self philosophy. While others might believe in Being Their Best Self, I see that line of thinking as a farce — one that gives people an unwarranted Mulligan for times when they don’t act up to par.

Make no mistake. The world is watching our every move. Our actions carry more weight than our excuses.

The guy who makes a fool of himself while drunk doesn’t get a pass. Neither does the girl who says offensive things to others when she’s tired and cranky.

What we say and what we do resonates. Regardless of context, it resonates.

Heck. In this era, our facepalm moments might even go viral — for all the wrong reasons.

It’s time to cut ties with the Best Self Fallacy. To stop stumbling through life dazed when we find it convenient.

It’s time to be more accountable. To be more aware.

This might be uncomfortable at first. Especially in a world where the radio implores us to Blame it on the alcohol, amongst other vices.

But we must power through. We owe it to all those around us to take this step forward.

For we can offer so much more by being more consistent. And we can eliminate a great deal of collateral damage.

So, let’s find greater clarity.

Let’s approach life with no filter.