It occurred to me today that when you work on fixing what is not rightfully your responsibility, you are doing the wrong thing. Why? Because your time and talent and energy should be focused on doing the right thing. It reminded me of the verse from Bob Dylan’s You’re Gonna Make Lonesome When You Go – "when something is not right its wrong!"
So what’s wrong? It’s wrong, for example, to expect others to clean up your mess. While we can’t possibly finish the job, we baby boomers have a responsibility to leave this planet in a better condition than it appears to be presently heading. It would be wrong to expect our children to fix what’s already broken. We have to do the right thing for them.
This brings me to the genesis of my thought. Today a customer asked me to fix a condition that pre-existed my company’s work on a project. I used to do this – and at no charge. Why not, I reasoned, I’m already there and it’s not worth debating. This all saved me from confronting the reality that I was cleaning up someone else’s mess in the name of "customer service." It was a convenient lie I fed myself. Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize this isn’t how the universe works. It only creates a low state of consciousness. It’s not the proper resolution, unless you’re in the charity business, which I’m not. And even charities work for a specific purpose or reason.
When you take on responsibilities that aren’t rightfully yours, you feel compromised. You owe it to yourself, your company, and your customer to do the right thing. When we all do this, responsibility and accountability all fall into the right places and then the whole system is lifted up because now we are all working for the right reasons – we’re all being true to ourselves and not feeling that low state of making the wrong choice. Right choices are grounded in the right reasons – which is why they deliver the right results!
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