It can be as blatant as a sledge hammer hitting us in the face or as subtle as supreme ninja. The art of blaming is rampant and goes on to help absolutely nobody.
Pema Chodron writes:
“We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who’s right and who’s wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don’t like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.”
And why not protect our hearts when there have been so many experiences showing us that it so easily bleeds?
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Pam
2:07 am on
September 7th, 2010It can be really hard to avoid both blaming others or blaming yourself; most people do one or the other (or both) and just switch methods when they try to stop.
It’s also hard (even harder, I think) to take responsibility for something without blaming yourself at the same time, and the same goes for laying responsibility (rightly) with someone else.
Thanks for this thought provoking post.
A very nice post. I liked the way you emphasised the habitual unconscious nature of blaming, both inter and intra personal blaming is poisonous stuff.
Sadly it’s a slow acting poison if it was like cyanide it would be easier to spot. It’s a lot more like smoking. Superficially innocent, feels good at the time but there’s trouble in store down the line.
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