(10/11 9:50 am)
Alright so spilling the ink was pretty suckish, but it wasn't my fault because Mom sad accidents and mistakes just happen. Like, she breaks a plate and spills some milk and it's fine and she doesn't blame herself because these things happen. But it blew my mind, the idea that mistakes just happen; I blame myself for everything. That plate being there at the edge of the counter? My fault somehow. My team losing in Overwatch? My fault somehow. The current political state? Not my fault. I do have some notion of what things I have control over or not.
I think it (meaning why I tend to blame myself) may have something to do with a) mental health stuff or something, or b) my growing up in the 1990s. A lot of my life can be pinned to one or both of those things. The 90s thing with this one though: maybe it's a generational difference? Specifically, all my elementary school years I hear the news, and it being the 1990s, all the news is about frivolous lawsuits. Or Pokemon cards. Or Elian Gonzalez. Also, celebrity scandals and crap. But mostly, frivolous lawsuits! And we made fun of them and whatever, ha ha of course it's not the defendant's fault, it's got to be the plaintiff's fault, but that still placed firmly in everyone's mind the unspoken notion undergirding the entire assumption: well, somebody's got to be at fault! That accidents don't just happen. And sure there were lawsuits back in the 1970s, but like nothing of epidemic proportions, that the national stereotype would be of Americans as litigious.
Maybe the mocking of these lawsuits also went toward the millennial generation being so friendly with strangers and stuff. I don't know. Things can have upsides too.
Thank you for this post. This explains I think, why I always blame myself for things--why I think there has to be someone "at fault." I need to understand that accidents exist and that they do happen sometimes.
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