Heavy Lifting

Okay, I acknowledge that I'm not ALWAYS responsbile. Sometimes I speed, sometimes I'm late to work, sometimes I forget to call someone back when I say I will. But for the most part I am a responsible person, probably to a fault. Which leaves me in this constant state of anxiety. I am anxious because I am concerned about not just doing a good job but doing the best job. I am anxious because I know if I readily do a good job that throws up a flare to my less responsible counterparts that someone else is willing to do the work, so they can just relax. I'm anxious because their willingness to accept their own irresponsible behavior is annoying and frustrating.

The irony is, that try as you might you cannot avoid the heavy lifting. You may be able to manipulate someone else into doing it for you for awhile (us do-gooders who somehow ended up with a mutant gene of common courtesy are usually the ones being manipulated) but eventually it will catch up to you. You can run from everything except yourself. Wherever you go, there you are. So if you need to change something about yourself, you need to behave in a more responsible way, you need to own up to what you do, you won't be able to avoid that forever.

Whether you believe in past lives or not, it seems pretty apparent that some people have a rougher time of it than others. Those people seem to be under a boulder that they can never cast off. Those particular people fall into two camps: those that resent it and find it necessary to tell everyone how miserable their life is; and those who embrace it and work to make things better despite their circumstances.

I hope I fall into the the latter category. My boulder is not as big as it used to be but it's still there. It's reminding me that I still have far to go before I can put it down, that my responsibilities are large and that I have the ability to be an example for others. So I follow my path and carry this weight and I hope that someday I will be able to cast it off and say I have done my part.
"Boy, you're going to carry that weight, carry that weight a long time..." The Beatles