Punishment vs Accountability

Do you know the difference between punishment and accountability consequences?

I didn't. At least not until recently.

I was taught that if you did something "wrong," you were punished. It's a lesson I think most of us learn as kids. Misbehave and you'll be punished. When we become adults, that ingrained lesson lingers. We think of our boss "punishing" us when we are late or sometimes even our spouse "punishing" us when we fail to do something.  The consequence of our less than ideal behavior is a punishment. In fact, we even "punish" ourselves. How many times have you blown a diet, only to punish yourself by saying you will never eat sugar again?

Consequence equals punishment.

The old lesson dies hard. Very hard.

But thanks to Dov Baron, my mentor and friend, I began to reframe my thoughts.

I've come to realize that a punishment is something imposed on us from the outside. It may--or may not--have anything to do directly with whatever it is we have failed to do. This stems from our earliest training. If you ran into the street, your mother might have yanked you back and given you a swat on the bottom. You were punished for running in the street, but being swatted and running in the street really don't have anything to do with each other per se. It's just that's how your mother decided to impart a certain lesson.

Or think about a child who won't eat dinner and is sent to the corner. Sitting in a corner and refusing to eat peas aren't absolutely linked. Again, it's just how your parents decided to teach a lesson about food and eating.

As we get older, the mantra becomes "Let the punishment fit the crime," so missing a curfew means getting grounded, for example. But still and all, punishments rarely address the subject of accountability. They simply are negative consequences imposed on us by an authority. If punishment were truly effective, there would be no repeat offenders. And our jails give lie to that.

Which brings me to accountability and consequences. Accountability means that I take full responsiblity for my actions--all of my actions, good or bad, right or wrong, foolish or wise. I and I alone am responsible for them.

Now I can hear the objections already:  What about things outside my control? What if, as happened to me today, I said I would send a file to someone and my email server went down. How can I be accountable for that?

Well, I'm not accountable for the failure of the email server. But I am accountable for the fact that the file didn't get where it was supposed to be at the time it was supposed to be there.

And here's where the idea of consequences comes to play. I am still accountable for the file transfer, regardless of the email situation. I am must hold myself accountable with consequences for my failure to do so on time even though it was "impossible" because of circumstances outside my control.

I realize this is a challenging concept...and not a particularly fun one because it eliminates every possible excuse and requires a consequence for every failure.

I can hear you again--this is crazy.  If I can't do something, I can't do something so why should I punish myself for something I couldn't do?

And that's where the difference between punishment and accountability consequences comes in. If I were simply going to punish myself for not having sent the file on time because the server was down, I might make myself drink my coffee black for a week, or work out for an extra hour or any number of unpleasant things designed to be a punishment. But none of those would show accountability--merely masochism.

Instead, and this is what I did do, when the file finally was able to transfer, I told the recipient that because the email server was down and because I wasn't able to deliver on time, I would be at his disposal for the next 24 hours to immediately make any changes that he would like--at no extra charge.

The reason I did this was because I was accountable for my action and inaction. I wasn't "punishing" myself. I was simply telling him--and me--that I have the moral integrity to be responsible at all times for all the things I do.

There's a bit more to it than that, but I've reached the word limit that the gurus tell me is optimal for a blog, so I'll leave the rest for the next post.

My friends all drive Porches, I must make amends

I've been feeling rather envious and jealous lately.  Envious of what I see as much better and happier lives that everyone, everyone I say, has but me.  

It seems I'm not alone.  Joanne K. McPortland and the Crescat both express similar thoughts on their blogs today.

 I particularly appreciate Joanne's take:

I’m not coveting wordly goods, at least not more than usually. I can whip together a pretty good self-pity party on occasion, especially when friends are talking about their new vacation homes and their retirement adventures, but most of the time I have the ability to count my innumerable blessings. No, I will never be able to retire, or buy a new home (first or second), or help my kids and spoil my grandson the way every parent and grandparent longs to, but there’s nothing to blame for that but my own choices and their consequences. And all told, I am enviable in the gifts that God and life and people I love have showered on me.

Yep, I know the feeling of smiling through the talk of the new vacation home and month in France and the 10K monthly retirement income that is 100% secure and not being able to spoil the kids or retire or or or....And I know, like Joanna, that it's the result of the choices I've made and their consequences.

Damn choices.  Damn consequences.  Damn feeling jealous.


The one thing that neither Joanna nor the Crecat talked about, however, is the feeling of panic that goes along with my envy.  The sense that things might get worse than they are right now and right now they aren't really all that wonderful. It's a sense that perhaps God is going to let me down; that God won't answer my prayers; that not only won't I ever get the vacation cruise and retirement income and spoiled family, but that I might not even get tomorrow's dinner.

Like Joanne, I know that the best and perhaps only way out of the envy trap is to count blessings, but some days, like today, I just don't feel like counting blessings.  I don't even feel like looking for blessings.  I just want what I want and I want it now.

I could try to put some sanctimonious spin on this, but I think I'll just leave it by saying that for whatever reason it made me feel better that I'm not the only one suffering from a bout of jealousy or envy today.

I guess misery really does love company.

Forgiveness

From a piece I wrote on forgiveness in this month's issue of Catholic Answer from OSV.
 

We need to understand that forgiveness doesn’t eradicate the law of cause and effect. Forgiveness doesn’t erase consequences. Take for example, a husband who has an affair and brings home a sexually transmitted disease to his wife.  His wife may forgive him, but they still have to deal with the medical repercussions of his adultery and probably with trust issues and other emotional aspects stemming from the affair. 

 Just because a sin is forgiven, the effects don’t disappear, either for the person doing the forgiving or the one being forgiven. To understand this better, think of the Cross.  Jesus forgave those who crucified him, but he still died on the Cross. The mere act of forgiveness didn’t change the physical reality of the action.

This is precisely why Catholics believe in the concept of Purgatory. We may be forgiven our sins, but that doesn’t mean that all the temporal effects are removed.  We still have to live with and work through the cost of our trespasses.  Neither extending or accepting forgiveness can change that reality.  In fact, sometimes we have to live a lifetime with the consequences of our actions, a constant and painful reminder of what we have done.

Prayers, Worries, Grieving and Sunday Gratitude

It has been a migratory week...or maybe it migrainal week.  Not sure of the right word, but I've had a headache off and on, which has made doing much of anything, including writing, difficult.  I've spent several long hours lying in a dark room, thinking about life, death and everything in between.

That's been one of the offshoots of griefwalking...I've not just been thinking about my mother's death, but I've been going back over my life, taking a long hard look at certain important junctions where I've made critical and life-impacting decisions. 

It hasn't exactly been pretty.

I can see so many places where I've made a truly massive mistake without realizing it until much later, sometimes years later.  I look back over my life, see those moments, and say to myself, "What WAS I thinking?" The truth is that I probably wasn't really thinking at all--I was just acting or reacting to circumstances. If you'd asked me then, I would have said that I was doing what was best, but now, with the wisdom of hindsight, I can see that I wasn't. To use the only phrase that seems appropriate, I can see how I truly f-ed up parts of my life.

And now I have to live with the consequences.

Because I know if I read this on someone else's blog, I'd be wondering "What did she do that was so horrific? Have an abortion? Kill someone? Rob a bank?" I'll try to put some of those questions to rest. No. No. No.

What I did are things like not try hard enough to repair a hurting relationship with the consequences that now I see the loss and feel the sorrow of that destruction.  I made decisions that have had enormous financial consequences, with the result that, now, at a time when many of my friends are happily thinking about retirement and the good life in a few years, I worry about how I'm doing to feed the cats next month.  And, what may be the most difficult to face, I see where I didn't follow my gifts, my heart and passion and now I am having to face the thought that it might be too late to ever use those in the way that God wanted me to.

So I am praying for a second chance, an opportunity to try again.  I'm not sure that it's even possible, it may be that too much water has gone under the proverbial bridge for the relationship to ever be restored. The financial impact of bad decisions may not be able to be undone at my age and in this economy.  I may have gone too far down a path to reverse and use my gifts the way they were supposed to be used.

It may not be possible, but then again, I am reminded that God specializes in the impossible. Who could imagine that a single tiny apple seed could eventually grow a thousand orchards? So this week, I am going to pray (added to that list of prayers that I am experimenting with answers) that I somehow can get those second chances.

If I can, then this time you can be sure that I will pay much closer attention to my decisions and do my best not to blow it a second time.

With that, this Sunday I am grateful for:

1.  Fresh strawberries.
2.  A desktop fountain and its soft gurgle.
3.  Skype and the ability to see as well as talk to my son and his girlfriend.
4.  A forget-me-not that took up residence in one of my pots on the deck.
5. The internet, that allows me to connect with people in a way undreamed just a few years ago.