Kindergarten and the blame game

Who did it? Who's responsible? I'm totally innocent! They made me do it! Sound familiar? Right out of the kindergarten hand book: When caught red handed, find someone else to blame. There is a lot of that going around lately.

I just finished reading, for the second or third time "All I really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, by author Robert Fulghum. It was published about 20 years ago, and may not be in print anymore. Kind of boring reading actually but still has some informative stuff in it along with a chuckle or two. It's spattered with little bits of wisdom from the ages: Play fair, don't hit people, flush, wash your hands, share, put things back and more, all good rules to live by. But there are other, less acceptable things we learned back then too, When you do something wrong forget it immediately and blame someone else, Cry and whine when you think someone doesn't share with you, Take what you can get. Most of us lose the unacceptable rules as we get older, some of us don't.

The news is filled with such things as denial, blame, whining and crying lately. From politics to business and literally all of life people are hanging onto those silly childish, kindergarten corruptions. Big oil says it's not their fault, government officials say it's not their fault, people that drive gasoline powered vehicles say it's not their fault and right on down the line. A bill was defeated concerning the extension of unemployment benefits, one party says it was the other party's fault, the other party says it was not, people unemployed for two or more years were going to lose their benefits because no one could agree on where the money was going to come from. Another blame game. "Not me!" "Not me!"

We live in an exciting time. Not a particularly fun or easy time but exciting never-the-less. It won't be any less exciting if some of us start taking responsibility for our own actions will it? I think it will become a bit more fun and possibly easier because we won't be so busy pointing fingers. My finger is getting a little sore anyway.............Joe