Responsibility -- where does it end?

Q:  I just learned that I'm supposed to be responsible for everything that happens in my life.  This seems absurd.  I can't be responsible for a drunk driver who hits my car or for anything that happened to me when I was a child.  What do you think?  F.G.

A:  You are right.  You are not responsible for anyone else's acts, including the choices made by the adults around you, which deeply affected your childhood.

A mark of maturity is good boundaries, which entails letting others be fully responsible for their acts (not taking on the task of "rescuing" others, or assuming self-blame for others' acts).

However, try this on for size.  Pretend.  Pretend that you ARE fully responsible for everything that has ever entered your life, that enters it now, and that will ever enter it.  Accept the radical paradox, that you're not responsible for others' acts, and you are responsible for every nuance of your own life.  This can be very empowering.  It is the only way I know that allows one to take full control over one's own life.

Victor Frankl said in Man's Search for Meaning, "We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing:  The last of his freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

The word responsibility is "response ability" -- the ability to respond in any given set of circumstances.