Taking responsibility...

I've had a lot of time to think while hiking. About myself. About my life. About my interactions with others. About my relationships.  About my noble purpose...my guiding star and gift to this world.  And well, it lead me to the thought of self mastery and responsibility.

Let me tell you the sad, heartbreaking story of Kitty Genovese.   Kitty was a young woman who was stabbed to death in New York City back in 1964.  I was not alive then, but I read about it. Over the course of a half an hour, she was attacked three times on the street as neighbors watched from their windows.   There were 38 witnesses to the horrific event, yet not a single person called the police during the attack.  The case caused a huge outcry in the news and media, and prompted researchers and psychologists to conduct a series of studies to understand why this happened.  They came up with a term for that phenomenon: The Bystander Effect.  The bystander effect is the idea that in an emergency situation the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely that anyone will help.  This is closely related to the diffusion of responsibility concept, where everyone's responsibility is no ones responsibility.  For kitty, this meant that if there had been fewer witnesses that cold night, the odds would have been greater that one of them would have taken action. Kitty would be alive.  So what is the takeway here? If people are not willing to take action, to help someone who is dying due to the bystander effect, then how likely are they to take responsibility for their own life, their own promises, their own commitments to change? Where nobody is watching, where it is not an emergency situation?  How can you not be a bystander in your life? And be sure that you are assigning yourself the responsibility to "do something". To make the world a better place, to master yourself, to change those pieces of you that you promised?   Don't assume that someone else will make the call for you, that someone else will take care of it, that the problem is not your doing,  that someone will do your part, or that you will work on it later......go out there and do it yourself.  Don't make excuses----well I thought he would call. Don't blame, it's not my fault everyone else did the same thing. Take responsibility for your life and this world.  And when you do.......see how much deeper you live.  See how much more you align yourself with your noble purpose. See how much you grow....and you will grow...lattitudes.