Responsibilty
A friend who entered an essay competition wrote this.
I will publish it here, regardless she will win or not.
Why? Cause I’ve given her some ideas to be written.
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Responsibility Begins With Me
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
- Mahatma Gandhi -
“If everyone sweeps in front of his own door,
the whole world will be clean.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Responsibility is often regarded as a burden, but here I discover
that it is actually a great source of personal power.
It is the key to taking charge of my life.
Some related definitions of responsibility as referred in Oxford dictionary :
- Response: answer, reaction
- Ability: skill, power (to do something)
- Responsible: having to carry out a duty, to be blamed for loss or failure, can be relied on
- Responsibility: the power to answer or react
To conclude, responsibility is taking care of our duties
and answering for our actions. For me, being responsible is
far more than to understand its meaning. Responsibility is also
a matter of heart and hand. Heart, to sense and feel responsibility
as part of ourselves. Hand, to actualize the essence of responsibility
through our actions. As an individual, I believe that
each of us is a part of our society and nation.
As a long journey starts with one step, so does being responsible
towards our society and nation should start by first being responsible to ourselves.
Responsibility begins with me. A very simple lesson of being responsible happened in the year 2006.
2006 was a year of learning for me. A busy year, where I started
to be involved in Student Senate and its activities. Spending nearly 9 to 12 hours almost every day at campus for studying and attending Senate acitivity meetings really absorbed my whole life during weekdays. During weekends, church ministry
and having fun with my friends back home were my priorities. It went through like that for almost a year, when I realized how big the gap between me and my family had grown. I didn’t have time anymore to spend with my parents and sister, skipped a lot of family gatherings, and put my busy activities as my number one priority, as a form of mere self-pleasing actualization.
Although they fully supported me and never complained,
somehow later my heart knew that something was wrong.
Family should always be the second priority after God.
I then decided, that responsibility should begin with me.
I should take the initiative to fix my relationship with my family.
Not by forgetting my responsibility in church during weekends,
but to balance the time and part that I should give proportionally to both of them.
At that point, I began to realize and understand
deeper that my calling and purpose in life is not to become busy,
but to become fruitful. My calling is to pay responsibility
to the 4 elements I have in life now : family, academic study,
church ministry and campus organization. It is my duty to balance
all of them according to the right priorities. Thus, my responsibility is also to give the best in my current season of life now.
It reminds me to my favourite verse from the bible :
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.
It is the Lord Christ you are serving”.
(Colossians 3:23-24)
I believe that the root of responsibility itself is to be responsible
to God for the life He has given us. Fulfilling my calling and purpose
of life is my first responsibility. I have a vision, that one day I will become a woman of God that has a positive impact through my faith, character and knowledge on every person with whom I come in contact, and therefore make changes for Indonesia especially in the field of youth and women empowerment. It is an important thing for me to look clearly towards my vision, and to commit myself to walk one step closer to it each day. I believe that having a clear vision is one of the process to being mature.
The core of maturity is responsibility.
I learned that a greater capacity of life always comes
with greater responsibility.
As Winston Churchill once said : The price of greatness is reponsibility.
Again, this relates to a bible verse as written in
1 Corrinthians 13 : 11 : "When I was a child, I spoke as a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
I will have to admit that the process to being mature is not that simple, as I can still be childish at times too. However, as we all have to learn to become mature in all aspects of life, so am I obliged to become more mature in life through responsibility that begins with me. Therefore, I am trying to balance personal growth in spiritual, emotional and intellectual aspect through every day learning.
At the end, being responsible is always a choice, a decision to be made. Implementing responsibility is a life-time process of learning
in the school of life. And we must not let ourselves fail in this subject!
Responsibility begins with me. And a beginning will always have a goal. In this case, the goal is : the glory of God!
Philippians 4:13
I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.
Catherine Susantio
Undergraduate Student
Pelita Harapan University, Faculty of Law
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I pray that you’ll earn the best result!
+ yoDi +
