"I Didn't Do It!" - Collective Responsibility in 2020 America

My kids are at the age where they manage to feel put out by being asked to do things, despite their incredibly charmed lives. There are times when it looks like an entire bomb went off in our living room, especially now that the kids are home for the foreseeable future thanks to COVID. Considering I’m on crutches healing from hip surgery, this has become more of a threat to my life than a mere nuisance to my eyes and sensibilities. 

“Girls,” I call out, every so gingerly, “Can you guys please come clean this mess up or are you actually trying to kill me?”

And inevitably, I am met with one of, I think, many mother’s absolute favorite phrases. 

“I didn’t do it!”

With a conviction and righteousness matched only I would imagine in actual courtrooms, I am greeted with commentary from the defense on who played with this one, which one played with that one, and they inevitably turn on each other. The whole mess, it would seem, created itself.

But I am sure to respond the same every time.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who made the mess. Because here it is. And when we live in family, in community, we accept responsibility for the collective mess. That means there will be times when you are cleaning up messes you didn’t make, and certainly there are at least as many times where others clean up your mess for you. It all comes out in the wash. 

When we excuse ourselves from existing in community, except for when it benefits us, we are not in community, we are using and abusing community. And ironically, we are guilty of perpetrating a dynamic which negates the possibility of living in community at all.

I get it. You didn’t bring COVID here. You didn’t personally own slaves. You, “don’t have a racist bone in your body.” 

But folks, we have a big mess here. Certainly there are many theories on where this mess came from, and I am heartened by those willing and able to understand the etiology, certainly.

But I won’t argue semantics, I’m not saying you aren’t in some ways responsible for the mess, and it’s not okay to hide behind your perceived innocence here. 

I’m saying right now it’s irrelevant. Because here we are.

It’s time to clean up. It’s time to stop standing around like children believing that if you don’t feel like you made the mess, you don’t have to clean it up.

Systemic racism, COVID, the environment, I could go on. And do I think that we ae as a society are culpable for our part in continuing to worsen these issues and not solve the messes we inheriited? 

Yes. I. Do.

But for now, we have trouble. Big trouble.

And if you consider yourself a member of this community, any community, your town, your state, your country, hopefully this world,  I’ll tell you like I tell my girls, “I don’t actually care who made the mess. It needs to be cleaned up. Sometimes we make the mess and sometimes we clean them up. And sometimes, like now, the mess presents a particular risk to other members of our community like me on these crutches. So get to it!”

So, get to it.