The Dichotomy of Blame

I despised my father.

Everything about him.

The way he talked, looked, ate, everything.

He never showed up to anything I had ever done.  Not a recital, a baseball game or track meet.

Nothing.

For years I lived a life full of anger, resentment and the need to prove to the world that I was worthy.  All because I chose to blame him for choices I made.

Blame. A powerfully negative word. I blamed him for all of my deficiencies.  All of my shortcomings.

Blame is defined as assigning responsibility for a fault or wrong.

Over my lifetime, I have witnessed words change meaning just because of someone’s prerogative.  For example, awful used to mean excellent, considering the root word ‘awe’ in the same vein as awesome. Sometime in the 1900’s awful began to absorb the negative aspect of awe.  This happened because someone decided to appropriate it in that way. 

Culturally speaking, I have witnessed this in a very vivid and nonconforming way. In a way to take back our identity and re-appropriate what we have lost over the years, we define what something means to us.

♫♫ NOT BAD MEANING BAD BUT BAD MEANING GOOD ♫♫ (Run DMC, Peter Piper)

With this perspective and combined with my own prerogative, I believe we should RE-FRAME THE WORD BLAME.

My hate for my father drove me to become obsessed with proving him wrong.  When I was in the fifth grade my obsession with Michael Jackson and MC Hammer were completely out of control.  I would go into my room and dance from sun up till sun down and have entire video dance routines memorized. Proud of myself, I presented my routine to my parents.  My mom, as mom’s do, was encouraging and happy at my progress.

My dad on the other hand told me that he didn’t think I could dance.  He actually told me that it wasn’t good at all.

Talk about being crushed. 

I was furious because I knew I was good. [Major Key: I knew I was good but I surrendered my inner reality of what I knew to be true, to a counterfeit perspective subsequently imprisoning me in doubt and fear.]  Luckily my school was having a dance contest and I declared that I was going to win solely to prove to my father that he was wrong.  For 3 weeks, I did nothing but dance in front of the mirror.  I mastered my routine and subsequently won the dance contest. 

Regretfully, the only joy I derived from that experience was to leave the first place trophy on my parents shelf so my dad had a constant reminder that he was wrong about me.  For much of my teenage and early adult years, the fuel for my drive was the disdain I stored up inside for my father not believing in me.  It wasn’t healthy and it didn’t make me a very nice person to be around.

This disdain manifested in several negative encounters with my friends and co-workers. I realized that the path I was shaping for myself will lead only to despair. The realization of the source of that anger helped me to face it and take ownership of my own emotions and feelings.  I was able to realize that my emotions were my responsibility to manage and to give ownership of my feelings over to an external source would only lead to further hopelessness and ultimately depression. Through wise counsel, I was able to forgive my father for what I perceived to be shortcomings. I was able to be empathetic and understand that he did the best he could with what he had.

It wasn’t my dad’s fault for the way he was but it was my fault for the choice I was making to continue to feel this way. In that moment, I chose that instead of blaming him for all the negative, that I would begin to blame him for the positive aspects instead.  I took ownership of the word blame and re-purposed it to also assign responsibility for the good and positive things. Instead of blaming him for not supporting me, I re-framed it and blamed him for challenging me to become a better version of myself. In that light, I was able to see the best of my father and realize that the negative aspects were irrelevant.

I blamed him for the relentless drive I was able to cultivate over the years allowing me to become unusually successful.  Who knows? Maybe if he had supported me the way I wanted and been there for everything, I wouldn’t be as driven or focused.  All I do know is that the man I am today is partially as a result of the things he instilled within me.  I blame him for my drive, my dedication, my ability to outwork anyone and my grind. I blame him for helping me become a man that works. No shortcuts. No hook-ups. 0400 every morning of my life he got up and made sure that his family was taken care of.

It’s so easy to blame people for the bad things that have happened to us.  It’s so easy to complain about the things that people didn’t do for us. But who did you become in spite of what you thought you needed from them? 

Out of the adversity, pain and the pressing that comes with it, what kind of diamond did you become? We control the narrative of our lives, we tell the story that we want to tell.  Negative blaming assigns to someone else the responsibility for our destiny and purpose.  Positive blaming extracts the positive results of an otherwise unfortunate scenario in an effort to allow you to control the outcome and accelerate the progress to your purpose.

We should concern ourselves more with accepting responsibility than with assigning blame. Let the possibilities inspire you more than the obstacles discourage you.