Tyson Responsibility

Responsibility

Human tragedy is all around us. Often times the trials and the difficulties that we go through help make us better, or they have the potential to break us down. The difference depends on how you react to certain situations. We cannot change what happens to us but we can choose how we react in the face of tragedy. The question is, what is my responsibility in the face of human tragedy? What do I have a responsibility to do when human tragedy hits? 

First of all I believe that it is important to note that circumstances or the poor choices of others are often what cause tragedies. I have yet to meet anyone that tries to bring tragedy into their own lives. Although some do welcome the challenge to improve. I believe that I personally have a responsibility to do a few things in the face of tragedy. First I believe that we have a responsibility to accept what has happened. You cannot change the past and so it doesn’t help to dwell on “what might have been.”  We also have a responsibility to do what we can to help others around us that are involved in the tragedy.

But how can we deal with human tragedy that we are not directly involved with? Often times we see things on the news that are startling and alarming but it would seem that we can’t do very much to help those that are so far away from us. So how do we help? First we accept what has happened. If we accept what has happened and then do what we can to help, we can feel as if we have fulfilled a responsibility. Granted we might not be able to do much, but what we can do will always be more than what we choose not to do. Just raising awareness to situations that are happening may help to fulfill the responsibility that we all have to help others.

One of the other responsibilities we have in the face of tragedy is to help those around us who may be directly affected by the tragedy. We have a responsibility to help each other and raise each other up. While I cannot say that I have had very deep tragedies in my life I have seen tragedies in the lives of others. While I was on my mission in Washington I would often times run into people that were being destroyed by personal tragedies in their lives. From Death, to divorce, to children running away, and even just people that had lost hope. In these times I know that I had a responsibility to help those that were in my path. Not because I was on a mission, but because these were fellow human beings that I had the ability to help. I would have been shirking my duty if I had not helped these families that I came in contact with.

I believe that our responsibility in the face of tragedy is to do what we can to help those around us. Tragedies will never stop coming everyone will be affected by tragedies in their lives at some point. We cannot always decide what will happen to us but I know that we can all choose how we react to tragedies when they do hit. We can choose to help in whatever way that we can. As we fulfill this responsibility we also begin to learn something of ourselves. We learn who we are.