Accountability Supporting Joy

Yes, that’s correct. I am saying that joy thrives with responsibility.

Consider just for a few moments, how many relationships in your life would be less joyful if when you harmed one another you did not take responsibility for that harm, make amends, and stop doing the harmful thing.

Pretending that no harm happened, or that we really did not have anything to do with that harm, or it could not possibly be as hurtful as the person we have hurt is saying does not increase joy in our relationships. Responsibility and accountability need not result in punishment or meting out equivalent harm for harm caused. But they do require attending to the beings in these relationships with respect, compassion, tenderness, and, yes, that uncomfortable reality of having caused harm. I say beings, because maybe the relationships that need attention are between human beings and maybe they are with others, like our polluted air and waterways or this rapidly changing earth.

The glee some expressed for feeling like they have gotten away with wrong-doing is their glee in escaping punishment, perhaps their pleasure in deliberately causing harm to someone else and not having to do anything.

The self-righteous justifications of causing harm to others or diminishing the harm caused is just that, protecting the self from not having to acknowledge that we have participated in hurt, maybe even in wickedness (which I define as intentional harm).

Often, we might be tempted to deny the harm we cause, because we believe we are good people and good people are defined as never messing up, or having biases, or having temper tantrums, or feeling threatened and lashing out or any other very human responses we have as good people to meeting experiences that challenge our sense of goodness and good-enoughness. When this happens around racialized harm and it is white people denying harm, we’re talking about white fragility, this hunger and need to be affirmed as good enough, literally at all costs to everyone and anyone else. I’ve experienced and witnessed a lot of that kind of need behind harm causing and avoiding responsibility, amends-making or repair, or efforts at changing the behaviors and attitudes and beliefs that are the propellent behind the harm.

All of us can cause harm. That ability does not mean we are not basically good or good enough people.

I have, on more than one occasion, had someone’s hurtful actions defended to me as “but they’re good people.” Over time, I have learned to reply, “they can be good people and they can still have caused harm. Good people hurt others every day.” We all have things to learn and unlearn, and we cannot do that without taking up responsibility for our words and deeds.

There are practices for repenting, the process of acknowledging we have caused harm. Every spiritual tradition has practices for returning to our fundamental values of care and nurturing relationships. Secular practices are innovated and developed every day, particularly as we try to find ways around increasing suffering through punishment and instead teaching people how to harm less, how to repair relationships, how to learn and grow through their accountability in and with communities of care.

Repaired relationships can be the grounds of such pleasure and joy. We do not need to intentionally break relationships to nurture that pleasure and joy, because I assure you, good people, we will make mistakes or be drawn into some attachment or belief that takes us out of relational nurturing and cause harm eventually.

So when this happens, may we take a few deep breaths, and begin the process of acknowledging we have hurt a relationship and how we have done so. May we attend well if the others in that relationship wish to tell us the effects of that harm. May we find and offer and follow through on the growth and change so that we stop causing the harm. May we do the work to repair the relationship and nurture trust and respect there again.

We also inherit social structures and relationships of harm, legacies that require current generations to take responsibility for the repair work past generations shifted down to us. We ourselves are harmed by the past generations having done so, because multigenerational and intergenerational harm becomes more and more challenging to undo. Lifetimes of unlearning and relearning, of trust building and relational care to bring balance to the lifetimes of harm and the further harm by pretending harm did not need reconciling, accountable, repairing relational work. Reparations, for example, are part of acknowledging the continuing inequities in wealth and access to the resources to thrive caused by dispossession from the land or enslavement and being stolen away from one’s home or denied one’s culture. They’re a gesture toward acknowledging the many generations of harm, and the continuing harm by not teaching or noticing or addressing the injustices and inequities that are carried on today.

Repairing relationships takes many forms, but it almost always involves reflecting with those harmed or their representatives, on what is needed.

There can be joy here, joy in nurturing a present and future where the harm causing stops and repair is just part of who we are and how we live. Let us move away from punishment and move more fully into real responsibility that attends to repairing our communities and world, making space and resources for healing, and relationships that can thrive with joy.