One Man's Shirked Responsibility Is Another Man's Chance

I’ve been reading Jeanette Walls’s new book, “Half Broke Horses.” The main character, Lily Casey, doesn’t seem the Lily type at all. She’s tough. She’s the one who took on all the responsibilities that came her way: as an adolescent, she ran her family’s farm, since her dad’s disabilities kept him from doing it, and her mother, a lady, wasn’t interested in it; she rode a horse 600 miles in 28 days to go become a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse not once but twice; she went off to Chicago and made her living as a maid, attending high-school classes at night; she married a good-for-nothing man who took her money, but after beating him up and cussing him out, she gritted her teeth and moved on.

Too often in life, people who live together fail to share responsibilities or have different ideas about what the responsibilities are. The person with the highest standards ends up doing most of the work or becomes bitter with resentment at the others who should step up to help but don’t. This seems to be how it goes in my apartment of four unrelated people sharing common spaces.

My housemates are lax at dishwashing. If a housemate doesn’t wash his dishes after two days, he won’t do them after a week. It’s more trouble for me to get my housemates to do their dishes than it is for me to do them myself. If I do it, the dishes are clean, and I no longer have to feel slighted every time I go into the kitchen. If I leave the dishes, they bug me every day, and no one does them. If I ask my housemates to do their dishes, reminding them whose are whose, they’ll do them, but it makes for a tense relationship, and I end up doing the unclaimed dishes, anyway.

The most effective way to get them washed is to wash them myself. Maybe this attitude toward community dishes could extend into the wider world.

If one is going to lead a happy, productive life, one must avoid bitterness. I think that sometimes means forgiving people for their shortcomings and picking up their slack. It means paying less attention to what you think people should be doing and more attention to reality. You have to work with a world full of people who all shirk responsibilities, some people more than others. There’s enough irresponsibility in the world to turn me into an unripe persimmon of a person if I let it! Rather than complain about the way people are, it’s probably better to accept it and work around it.

There are advantages to being the one who does the work. I imagine that it makes one capable and confident in one’s abilities to take care of things. One may learn to focus on goals and stop worrying about petty things, like who does what. Eventually, if one consistently makes the best out of situations, people will start putting one in charge of situations. One becomes a leader, the money follows, and with money come more opportunities.

I say “one,” because I can’t yet say that I have done these things, and I don’t want to direct the statements at “you,” either.

Maybe living with people who shirk their responsibilities is an opportunity for me to take them on. In the end, it might turn out best.