Responsibility

Responsibility is a word which every civilized person comes across in his lifetime, at every stage of his life. In his early life, he is supposed to shoulder various responsibilities towards his siblings, towards his studies, etc. then as his next stage sets in, his next responsibilities come ringing at his doorstep – viz. responsibility towards his job, family, etc. Even in his later stage of life, he can brag of not being devoid of responsibilities – like responsibilities to settle his children and what not. So, practically a person’s life may be treated as a plethora of responsibilities to be taken care of and how he shouldered his responsibilities and contributed to the society pretty much sums up every ‘average civilized person’s life’.

But my question is that what about ‘after-life responsibilities’? Yes, after-life responsibilities (or were you thinking that all responsibilities would end with your life?JJJ ) which might have to be taken care of in this very human life which we have got. Has anyone ever given a thought? Well, this idea has been given a thought by many revolutionary thinkers and these thinkers also spread their conclusions to the world far and wide in their lifetime; but unfortunately few are there in this world who follow their conclusions to the roots. I will discuss this aspect of responsibility later.

First, let me define what responsibility actually is, what should be its features and in how many varied aspects this term ‘responsibility’ can be visualized.

The word responsibility has been defined in the dictionary as: the state of being responsible; the opportunity to act independently; a thing which you are required to do as part of your job, role or obligation. So, we see that there are three different meanings of responsibility. The first out of these ma have two different meanings (having slight difference): ‘being the cause of something and so able to be blamed or credited for it’ or ‘able to be trusted’.

Responsibility in terms of the opportunity to act independently is what I believe one of the best forms of responsibility and it is my favourite form of responsibility too. The best feature of it is the fact that the person is free to act in his own way. He is free to innovate new ideas, learn from past mistakes and the experience gained from shouldering such type of responsibility is worth a lot. The only requirement in this is the fulfillment of the responsibility in spite of whichever way it is fulfilled as it is not of much concern.  Some examples of this kind of responsibility are: in olden times the responsibility which the king and queen had towards their kingdom and its subjects; the responsibility of parents towards their children; the mutual responsibility of a husband and wife relationship, etc. The best part of this form of responsibility is that one does not have a ‘supreme power’ forcing on him the responsibilities instead this this type of responsibility arises from deep within one’s heart towards those to whom we are devoted a lot.

Next form of responsibility is ‘a thing which you are required to do as part of a job, a role or an obligation ‘. This form is of a lower degree than the previous form of responsibility because in this form of responsibility, there is always a ’supreme power’ (a person who has given you the responsibility and expects it to be fulfilled) egging the person towards the fulfillment of the responsibility. Some of its obvious examples are: various jobs in government and private organizations and institutions, etc. unfortunately, nowadays, one thing is rapidly falling into this category of responsibility and that is patriotism towards one’s country (I am talking of the gandhian type of patriotism and not the war-raging type of patriotism). Citizens today need to be reminded that it is their responsibility: to keep the streets free of trash and rubbish, to save electricity, not to spoil our natural resources and what not. Is it not something which should arise from deep within our hearts to carry out such responsibilities and out of sheer devotion to our country? Well, I think that unless every citizen has devotion from his heart towards his country, true patriotism cannot be said to have been exhibited in the country.

Now, coming to what I was talking of something like ‘after life responsibilities’ in the starting. What are they? Are they something very high-fi or involving philosophy of highly advanced minds? The answer is- no. The next question which arises is that who can carry out such responsibilities: upper class people, middle class people, lower class people, saints, yogis, those who know philosophy intricately or any common man? The answer is: by them all. Now I am coming on to ‘what are these enigmatic responsibilities?’. The responsibilities are very simple but they require one very important factor and that is belief in God. The responsibility is to lead as ideal, righteous and virtuous life as possible. To know the features of such a life one may refer any religious scripture. They are all basically filled with it only. The purpose of carrying out these responsibilities is to purify our soul to such an extent that it merges with the God and that is what I believe is the ultimate purpose of each one’s life.