The Buck Stops Where??
It really amazes me the cases people bring to the courtroom. Quite often it seems to be for one reason… someone refuses to accept responsibility for their own decisions or actions.
Case in point… the January 2006 issue of Reader’s Digest features a story “You Be the Judge” by Robin Gerber. It’s about a 10-year-old boy who was mauled by a Rottweiler-pit bull mix dog.
The dog’s owners typically kept the dog closed off in a bedroom when the boy visited. Good.
Unfortunately, one day the dog was not shut away. It attacked the boy requiring him to endure 3 hours of surgery to repair the damage to his upper arm and elbow.
The boy’s family sued the dog’s owners (for medical costs–I’m assuming). But the dog’s owners did not have any money. In fact, they rented the house they lived in. So boy’s family decided to sue the landlord.
WHAT???
During the trial, the dog’s owners basically claimed that it was the landlord’s fault that they had the dog. Because if the landlord had told them they could not have the dog, they boy wouldn’t have been bitten.
I’m not convinced they would have gotten rid of the dog if the landlord objected but that’s another rant for another day.
My question is why couldn’t the dog’s owners have admitted responsibility for their dog’s behavior and found a way to pay the medical bills of the child the dog attacked? Why did they have to support the effort to pass responsibility on to the landlord?
The verdict in the case was in favor of the landlord. It could not be proven that he knew a vicious dog lived on the premises therefore although it was his property he wasn’t responsible for what happened there. Good decision.
I am so tired of people passing the buck to someone else when something goes wrong. Do you do it? Do you make excuses (which may be valid) or do you own up to what went wrong and say, “I was mistaken but I’ll do what I can to fix it”?
Self-responsibility is one of the keys to feeling successful and happy. It helps you take control and ownership of your own attitudes and behaviors. It helps you see what you are doing right and what you might consider improving about yourself. But if you are consistently passing the buck to others, you’ll never see the need to improve yourself or the circumstances around you. And without improving yourself and working to improve the circumstances, you can blame others all you want, but your life situation isn’t going to change much.
Harry Truman reputedly had a sign on his desk that said, “The buck stops here!”
Where does the buck stop in your life?
