Read by Paul Travis on Yom Kippur Day 5778

My Responsibility

• I am responsible for my relationship to you
• I am responsible for the way I see you
• I am responsible for letting you see the inner me
• I am responsible for correcting false images of me that I give to you
• I am responsible for my judgements of you
• I am responsible for my understanding of what you say and do
• I am responsible for any hurts I allow myself to feel about you
• I am responsible for any desires of needs I feel toward you
• I am responsible for frustrations of my desires or needs toward you
• I am responsible for any hostility I allow myself to feel toward you
• I am responsible because I choose to be responsible
• I am responsible because it gives me pleasure
• I am responsible because it gives me control
• I am responsible because it gives me freedom
• I am responsible because it gives me relaxation
• I choose not to be responsible for your relationship to me
• I choose not to be responsible for your communications to me
• I choose not to be responsible for such impossibilities
• For if I choose to feel responsible for your happiness
• Then I would feel guilty about your unhappiness
• And if I shoud try to make you responsible for my unhappiness
• Then I would feel responsible for your misery about my unhappiness
• When I am responsible and know it, I am free
• When I am responsible and don’t know it, I’m still responsible
• And therefore, since I am responsible anyway,
• I choose to be aware of the blessing of being responsible
• What a pleasure it is to know the freedom and power of my responsibilty
• For responsibility is love in motion
• And responsibility is the toast of one soul to another

 

Author Unknown