Natural disasters… war time tragedies… terror attacks… horrific car accidents… mass shootings. These events are life changing… life ending… absolutely devastating situations that all have one thing in common… after said event… “we” as a society cannot help ourselves but to immediately start to point the finger at a group that we don’t belong. We lay blame. We go on TV and social media and our dinner tables and our coffee shops and restaurants… and we talk endlessly about what could have been done by X group… what should have been done by Y person… what decision was made by Z leader that allowed for an opportunity for said event to occur. We can’t help ourselves… we are obsessed with alleviating our anxiety and heartache by channeling these negative emotions into “them” so that we can sleep at night “knowing” that it wasn’t our fault.
But does this actually help anyone? Does this bring our communities back after a tragic fire event? Does it bring our brothers and sisters in uniform back after they lost their lives in a war that should have never happened in the first place? Does it do anything at all besides give us something to talk about and distract us from the pain that we feel? I think we can hypothesize that we are prone to the “blame game” because it is an emotional safe guard. Similar to the reaction of taking your hand off the hot stove when you feel the pain of the heat… we want to stop the hurt as fast as possible and if we can place blame on “them” for the pain… our hand is off the coils… at least for the moment. And if we buy into this theory… we can “understand” why we do it but we are intellectual people (right?) and we know that blaming others to quall our temporary pain does not solve the bigger issue at hand. So, then… why do we spend so many hours and days and weeks blaming when we know that it is simply a band aid?
I think about two drastically different societal groups… one that I am unfortunately a part of… the one at the bottom of the spectrum… convicted felons living behind bars and on the other end of the rainbow… professional athletes. We look to our athletes as leaders… as examples of hard work and dedication and skill that we want our younger generation to strive toward. And we look to incarcerated inmates as what ‘not to do’… to avoid making the type of decisions that accompany a low moral fiber that should be avoided at all costs to not end up in the same circumstance. But both of these subsections of our society share a common behavior… neither places blame on others when things get rough.
There is an unwritten rule within the walls of prisons across this country… you do not… under any circumstance “rat” or “snitch” aka place blame on another inmate if something goes down on the inside. If the heat is on you… you are to keep your mouth shut… deal with the consequences in the moment and handle the situation once things cool down. You will not find an inmate pointing to another inmate saying “It was his…” “He started it…”. You won’t even find a khaki suit saying “It wasn’t mine”… and not directly saying it was someone else’s because that is known as “dry snitching” which is just as bad as directly “snitching” in here. It just doesn’t happen.
And then we look at the other side of the coin… professional athletes. What do we hear from the leaders of our favorite sports teams when things go wrong on the field or the court. We hear Lebron say… “I need to be better”… We hear Patrick Mahomes say… “The guys played great… I need to make better decisions that get the team in a position to win.” We never hear these guys point a finger at someone besides themselves when the end result does not fall their way. The blame rests on their shoulders and their shoulders alone… whether that it is actually the case or not. And what does this do? It allows for the team to stay united as one… it avoids the inevitable argument that stems from placing blame on others… it shows that the leaders of the team are more concerned about the team as a whole as opposed to their personal ego. Because they know that it takes a whole team to be successful… not an individual person and at the end of the day… attitude reflects leadership and the leader wants his or her team to have the right attitude going into next week. So… he or she stands up and shoulders the negativity because it is a part of the job.
But why can’t everyone in-between the khaki suit wearing inmates and the Championship winning athletes stop themselves from blaming others in times of crisis?
I wish I had the answer but I do believe that it is an important notion to think about out there… and to talk about with the people that are actively doing the blaming as we speak. I challenge you guys to take a beat the next time that you get the inevitable impulse to join in on the warm comfort of conversation that stems from blaming “them” or to raise the question as to why we feel the need to place this blame when you find yourselves in a conversation where others are throwing shade.
I think if we can personally focus this energy on actually moving conversations forward when crisis strikes as opposed to halting progress through laying down guilty verdicts… we may actually find a way to genuinely heal together. And in times such as these past couple weeks with the Fires in Los Angeles… the only way to begin to re-build… both literally and emotionally… is to do it together… in unity with one another… independent of where the “fault” of it all lies.
Stay Healthy. Stay Active. Stay United.