Mar
You Do the Fixing
Half of my street is still blacked out from the storm that hit this past weekend. This was the worst storm I have ever seen in this region. Crews have been brought in from as far as western Pennsylvania to help restore electrical service. Parts of northern New Jersey are flooded. A huge tree on our street toppled. My house had several slate shingles broken by the wind and our basement had a couple inches of water. That water was from rain, not runoff. We live on the higher part of the street.
Who is going to fix it?
The town is responsible for the street, and the power company handles the wires. Everything else is up to the homeowners. I had to “power-vacuum” water out of the basement. I will have to call a roofer to fix those shingles. All of the damage to my home is my responsibility.
Like most people, I am taking it in stride. We are so used to the process of handling nature’s wrath that we do it without a second thought. That is very different from how folks are handling other problems. People will seek someone to blame and try to foist responsibility elsewhere if the problem is not nature.
It is natural that after a storm , we take action to repair the damage. We did not cause the problem, but it is our responsibility to fix it. No other entity is going to step up and claim responsibility.
While we so easily accept the damage of storms, we often must take the same outlook on the other woes that may come our way. We may not have caused the problem, but it is up to us to find and implement a solution. Let me use a drastic example: alcoholism. People do not ask to become alcoholics. The origins of the disease are any combination of genetic, biological, and social factors. If a person is alcoholic, it does him no good to blame fate, his upbringing, dum luck or genetics. Instead of asking why it happened to him, he needs to ask what he can do to solve the problem. Having alcoholism is not his fault, but taking measures to remedy it is all on him. The problem might be alcoholism, addiction, poverty, an ailment or other difficulty. A person might not have brought these on himself. However, they will not go away unless he applies a solution to the problem.
One simple statement says it all: you may not have caused the problem, but you are responsible for its solution. As it is with the storms of nature, so it is the storms in our own lives. The problem will not go away until you start fixing it.
Inevitably, it is that simple. No matter what the origin, the responsibility is yours. The sooner you act to fix it, the sooner you will be rid of it.
