by Bob Olson, OfSpirit.com Editor

In an effort to keep up with the times and compete in the major media arena, we made the decision to start using more celebrities in our magazine. We didn’t have the budget to pay for famous movie stars, so we dressed up a pig in fancy sunglasses instead. We figured that people would focus on the movie star sunglasses and not notice what was really behind the garb. Unfortunately, no matter how much we disguised the pig to look like a movie star, it was still just a pig in fancy sunglasses.

This is an article about taking personal responsibility for our own lives. When we stop blaming others for the negative outcomes in our life, we can learn and grow from each experience. Disguising our own responsibility by placing the focus on other people inhibits our ability to learn from our experiences.

For twelve years, I investigated accidents as a private investigator for personal injury attorneys. There is a lot of finger pointing going on in the world of personal injury lawsuits. I had one case where some parents sued a skateboard manufacturer because their child fell off the skateboard. Another person blamed a ladder manufacturer because he fell off his ladder. I even had a case where a guy was suing a chainsaw manufacturer because he cut through his leg instead of the tree. In all three cases, the juries came to the same conclusion: it was an obviously foreseeable accident. The juries said that the plaintiffs assumed responsibility when they climbed the potentially dangerous ladder, used the potentially dangerous chainsaw and allowed their child to play with the potentially dangerous skateboard.

My friend recently told me about a computer virus she received by email. She blamed her colleague for emailing it to her. What she didn’t realize was that the virus took over her colleague’s computer and sent emails to everyone in his address book. It was the virus “creator” who sent her the email, not her friend.

If my friend took responsibility for her own computer virus, she may have learned from the experience to take preventative measures against future viruses: to install some virus prevention software or to stop opening attached email files. Instead, her focus was on blaming her colleague and she learned nothing.

My father died five years ago from lung cancer. Shortly before his death, someone discovered that an x-ray had been taken years prior that showed the beginning of his cancerous tumor. His doctor had not seen the tumor, and it went undiscovered until it was too late.

My father's lawyer friend told him he had a solid medical malpractice case against the doctor who overlooked the revealing x-ray that might have saved his life. My father looked at his friend and said, “But that’s the same doctor who encouraged me to stop smoking for twelve years, yet I didn’t listen. I can’t blame him for something I did to myself.” Perhaps we have the most clarity when our lives are about to end.