I read a lovely blog post the other day that can be found here and asked the author a question about what age we can be considered responsible for our own thinking and actions. I received a great and comprehensive reply which you can read in the post comments, but I really wanted to share a few thoughts now about this idea of being responsible.

As we grow from being small children, we receive gifts of wisdom, knowledge, beliefs and much more from our parents and carers. As we evolve into adults, we carry on our beliefs (and a few that we’ve made ourselves in response to our experiences and situations) and some of these do not serve us very well. At some point, hopefully, we become conscious of these beliefs (or limiting beliefs) and we are able to make changes to change these into positive beliefs that can help us.

However, what if we don’t become conscious of these beliefs, can we be held responsible or accountable for something that we created as children when we are unable to do anything about it? In America, there was a case where a man got his prison sentence changed from murder to manslaughter because his lawyers claimed that he had been eating Twinkies (a high-sugar food) and therefore couldn’t be held responsible for his actions. This became known as the Twinkie Defence (the loophole was quickly closed in US Law) – you can read about that here. Obviously I’m not talking about Murder here – but for everyday stuff, are we responsible for things that we are doing unconsciously?

Maybe our responsibility is in educating others that such a thing may be happening to them unconsciously and to be vigilant to our own actions . If they appear to be out of line with who we are, such as being angry for no apparent reason, then it’s possible that we’ve reacted unconsciously and there is an opportunity to become conscious and act differently another time.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – it’s one that I’ve pondered over for a long time now!