21.09.2026 Diary XXI Responsibility and the mediocrity of blame

21.09.2026 Diary Page XXI

Blaming is free. Responsibility is expensive. The difference between them is whose hands your life is in.

Monday. Yesterday I wrote the Penny Factory, I told about the deceiver. Today I want to write the other side of the coin. Because there is a sentence that has to come right after an entry about being deceived:

Not everything is someone else's fault.

I am writing this to myself.

The ease of blaming

Blaming is the cheapest feeling a person has. It comes at once, asks for nothing, comforts immediately.

If the job did not work out, the client did not understand. If I did not make it in time, the day was short. If I scattered, the environment was noisy. If we fell out, they started it. If we could not do it, the conditions were not right.

There is a share of truth in each. That is the sneaky part. If it were a lie we would notice. We believe it because it is half true.

But after a while these sentences turn into a language. Someone who speaks that language can explain everything and change nothing.

What the one who blames loses

I think what is lost is not anger, it is power.

If the cause of the problem is entirely outside, the solution is outside too. Then whatever you do makes no difference. You will wait. For the conditions to improve, for the other person to change, for someone to notice.

The person who blames may be right but is helpless. They become the spectator of their own life. Others play on the stage, they shout from the boxes.

I see this as mediocrity. Not as a moral flaw, but as a comfort. It is the easiest place. No one throws you out of it, the one who has to leave it is you.

Let me write my objection too

I am not going to put the sentence “everything is in your hands” here. Because it is not.

Everyone's cards are not the same. Some start in debt. Some are ill. Some are in the middle of a war. Some, because no one looked after them in childhood, are still learning at thirty to look after themselves. I received my diagnosis at 23; I have no word to say to someone who sums up the load of the years before that as “fine, but why didn't you try.”

Some things really are not fair. Really are not your fault.

But there is this too: a thing not being your fault does not mean that fixing it is not your job.

This sentence is one of the harshest of my life.

Where the two part

Blame looks to the past, responsibility to the future.

Blame asks “who did this.” Responsibility asks “what do I do from here.”

One sets up a court, the other opens a road.

I have spent a lot of time in court. There were long hearings in my head. Hearings where I proved who was in the wrong, made very good defences, and in the end nothing changed.

All that remains of those hearings is tiredness.

The ADHD part

Here is a place where I have to be honest.

ADHD is a real explanation. Time blindness is real, task paralysis is real, scattered attention is real. When I got the diagnosis so many things fell into place.

But an explanation, after a while, can be used as a shield. “I have ADHD, these things happen.” This sentence comforts once, makes things easy the second time, and by the third you have stopped thinking.

I put the distinction like this: ADHD explains why the work is so hard. It does not send the bill for its not being done to anyone.

Saying “there was traffic, and anyway I have ADHD” when I am late is one thing. Saying “I was late, I am sorry, next time I will leave half an hour earlier” is another. The second is also the sentence of a person with ADHD. Only of one who takes responsibility.

This is not being hard on myself. It is taking myself into account.

A diagnosis is not an excuse, it is a map. With the map, you still walk the road yourself.

The truly heavy side of taking responsibility

I do not want to write this as if it were light.

Taking responsibility does not mean no longer being able to be angry at anyone. But it means this: after you have been angry, there is still something that is yours to do.

If you were deceived, it is the deceiver's fault. Not sitting at the same table again is your job.

If you are exhausted, the weight of the load is real. Talking in order to reduce the load is your job.

If a job is not going well, the conditions may really be bad. Looking and asking “where am I in this” is still your job.

This is heavy. But it is also the only thing that frees. Because the moment you have something in your hands, you stop being the spectator of your life.

It has a counterpart around you too

There is an invisible side to this: standing next to someone who blames is tiring.

What happens to everyone becomes bigger when it happens to them. At the end of every conversation stands an injustice. After a while you do not want to tell that person anything, because whatever you tell turns back to their own case.

I did this too. In a hard period there were times when I brought every conversation to the same place. Later I noticed: the people in front of me were listening to me but the conversation was no longer for two.

This is a quiet benefit of taking responsibility. A person can hear the one in front of them again.

And this

Blaming yourself is not responsibility.

I confuse this sometimes. Saying to yourself “am I an idiot” is taken for taking responsibility, but it is another bench of the same court. There too nothing changes, only you are the one sitting in the defendant's chair.

The voice of responsibility is not loud. It is usually a calm sentence: “Okay, this is how it happened. What do I do now?”

What I wrote to myself today

When something goes wrong, first ask: what percentage of this is in my hands? Sometimes five percent. Five percent is something too.

Being right and getting somewhere are not the same. Decide which you want.

Do not confuse blaming yourself with responsibility. One keeps you in place, the other makes you walk.

Explain your ADHD, do not hide behind it. The line between the two is thin but you know where you stand.

And remember this: you may have to pick up something that is not your fault. This is not fair. But when you are the one picking it up, that life becomes yours too.