May 14, 2006

Response and responsibility

I read an interesting entry on a blog I visited today. The entry was about how this lady was the guidance counsellor for a group of high school students and she almost stopped a project that a few of them proposed because she didn’t have the time to devote to it. (She tells the story much better and my condensation just doesn’t do justice to it anyway – so go read the story :p) She realized in time that they didn’t want her to be involved, just to be a counsellor and they did end up going ahead with it and it was a roaring success.

When I read the story, I was struck by her final comments where she remarks about how often have we shot down a project or an idea because *we* couldn’t handle the responsibility. She wrote the article from the perspective of a counsellors (or an adults) interaction with youth. But I was struck by the fact that this same point applied to what we did everyday with anybody we came in contact with. So I wrote a comment on her site which said something along the lines of, how often have we, perhaps unconsciously, discouraged somebody from following their dream or from trying out a new idea they had because we thought it wouldn’t work or because we felt that the other person wasn’t ready for it or because we didn’t want to be dragged into the project ourselves? How often have we crushed the seed of something great because of our fears, insecurities and our prejudices? Makes you realize how much responsibility you wield on a day-to-day basis and how the tiniest of your actions can affect things on such a grand scale perhaps. A butterfly flapping its wings in Sumatra …

Tags: Reflections
Posted by Fahim at 6:57 am   Comments (2)

2 Responses to Response and responsibility

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#1
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Kelly Curtis 14 May 2006 at 5:50 pm

Fahim – Your thoughts on this topic are fantastic and oh-so-true. And thanks for the link!

#2
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Dawno 14 May 2006 at 5:21 pm

It’s so true! In our work lives we often are part of projects that have failed, fizzled or went way off track, and when someone comes along with ‘project from hell, redux’ we apply our negative experience to the idea rather than giving encouragement. Past performance is no guarantee of future success – OR failure! Both your post and Kelly’s were great.

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