Taking Responsibility

NITZAVIM Taking Responsibility Every person you know is wrestling with something. Each one is hamstrung on other factors that restrain them. The first stage of redemption and healing, the key to true repentance to G-d: the understanding that we -and nobdy else- are responsible for our choices. We alone are the reason we are in the place we find ourselves in, and no one in the world, from within or from without, can force us to be in a place we do not want to be. When we find ourselves stuck in a particular place, it means we chose to be stuck there. Sometimes, it is convenient for us to be submissive, bound, helpless, and victims, but this is our choice. Understanding this is not meant to inhibit change; on the contrary, it is the key to change and correction. Taking responsibility for our choices frees us from them and allows us to change them. If we choose to make a mistake, we can also choose to stop making that mistake and do something differently. On the other hand, the alternative is to continue blaming others, and then the worst happens: we entrust our fate to others and willingly enter into eternal entrapment.