Responsibility

A week ago it was brought to my attention that within me there is an expectation that if I care for others then somebody, when I need it, will care for me. I felt misunderstood, misjudged, thinking that yes, that would apply to my sibling who states this clearly, no beating around the bush. But it doesn't take a deep thinker to see that if that feeling is within my sibling, being brought up together by the same parents, it's probably in me too. It's just that I convince myself that I'm not like that, I'm just a little 'holier-than-thou' there.



I attended a small group the other day, of people who want to build nesting boxes for birds in order to enhance their likelihood of survival given the destruction of forests and imbalance caused by us humans. As I sat there listening to the enthusiasm of the others for the birds, their wanting to know more about their nesting and feeding patterns, their habitat, their ability to get to food and water so that we could build suitable 'housing' and put it in suitable places, I became more aware that I don't feel strongly about birds. I love the dawn chorus that wakes me and I love to see pretty little colourful birds but later as we walked through the bush I was even more aware that I'm far more interested in trees than birds. My enthusiasm for building nesting boxes is based mainly on how much I love to work with wood and produce something useful.



I could stop there and say, 'well, we were all created differently and that's how it is', but it isn't really. Because if I go back to how I felt when people were discussing birds I discover that there's a familiar groaning within me, that 'oh no, here's something else I should be responsible for', and I feel like a bad person because I'm obviously different to all these people who want to give to birds as opposed to me - I just want them for their dawn chorus and their beauty.



Somewhere, a long time ago, I picked up that I need to be responsible for – well, just about everything – the well-being of my partner, kids, friends, the tidiness of my room, my house, my garden, the world, you name it. But it has also been pointed out to me (incidentally by the same person who pinpointed my expectation) that many of us who were given undue responsibility when young grow up believing they are responsible for others and often forget to be responsible for themselves in the process. Hmm. So that's why I expect others to, at some stage, return the favour?



I sat high up on a large smooth rock this morning, part of a tiny canyon, next to a huge tree that just seemed to grow straight out of rock, sunny blue sky, white clouds overhead reflected in a small clear pool below me where baby goannas were swimming. Another tree with new green growth and flowering, grew beside the pool, providing welcome shadow. I love to be in the wilderness so much. It occurred to me that among other things it is also an escape, a place where not I but God will tend to the landscape – I don't feel responsible.


I'm running away though. I want to get to where I don't think things out at all, where I do things because I love doing them, where the act of doing is the reward in itself, where it doesn't even occur to me whether something is fair or not. But, like my sibling, I had better start with being up-front about how I really feel.



Meantime, Paul Simon's words are singing in my head:



Far above the golden clouds the darkness vibrates
The earth is blue
And everything about it is a love song
Everything about it.

Sitting on my rock I'm overwhelmed with how everything about the earth is a love song.

And love does not feel like responsibility.