What is Sanity?

What is sanity? The answer is simple… sanity is taking responsibility for your own behavior. It’s just that simple.

It would be nice if most of us were striving to achieve sanity rather than striving so hard to get ahead. If we were all striving to take responsibility for our own behavior, what a wonderful world it would be.

So, what is good behavior? Good behavior is being kind, honest, and considerate. It sounds simple right? It’s really not that simple. It is incredibly difficult to maneuver around in the world and maintain your sanity. For instance, let’s say someone lied to you. What do you do? Are you kind to them? No. You will get upset with them and will probably be very unkind to them. So, this is the very tricky part of maintaining sanity. How can we be kind to people who are being unkind, dishonest and inconsiderate? It is a very, very difficult thing to do; however, that is what we need to start striving to achieve.

We simply cannot MAKE people be kind, honest, and considerate. We cannot MAKE anyone do the right thing. We can only work on being kind, honest, and considerate ourselves. We need to stop blaming other people for our own behavior and start taking responsibility for it. Until we start doing that, the insanity will continue.

Have I reached a level of sanity yet? No. I still get pretty upset when people are unkind, dishonest, and inconsiderate and therefore, I end up being pretty unkind myself. But, at least I know what I’m working on, not many people do. I do not blame someone else when I am unkind. I will take responsibility for myself and apologize even if the other person was unkind, dishonest, or inconsiderate first and never apologizes. I have control of my own life. I take responsibility for my behavior and my own actions.

The more we are able to reach a level of sanity, the better we will all feel about ourselves. At this point, people really have so much difficulty with taking responsibility for their own behavior and apologizing. They will stay up nights trying to justify their own behavior. It is a wonderful thing to get comfortable with the word “sorry.” Because, let’s face it, we are imperfect and we always will be and we will make mistakes and we will get angry on occasion so the sooner you get comfortable with that word, the easier life will be for you.

If you have any questions or comments about this article, please email me at beth@empathylessons.com.

- Elizabeth Fink, February 8, 2009

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