January 23

It is all too easy in our society to find scapegoats. Those people who we get to dump all of our problems on and blame. We get to pick certain people who will get to fall because of personal circumstance, whether it be because of sports, because of work, or because of plain old life.

It is so easy to point a finger at someone else and say "it is his fault things are happening this way." What is must harder is to look into yourself and decide that, maybe it was your turn to screw things up.

What I find most difficult to avoid is when we blame people for things that nobody controls. When the weather doesn't cooperate with our plans, when our plans fall through for whatever reason, when we get a cold on the day of the big celebration. We can't figure out when these things are going to happen. It is our job to just deal with them as they come up. Sometimes we look to others to blame these things on. Who can we blame so that we don't have to look at the situation for what it really was: a random act that maybe messed with our plans.

I was driving to a youth group event last weekend and blew out a tire. It was a random thing; I could have blown it out going to school the next morning, going to temple the day before, anything really. It just happened to be on the way to the youth group event that I most wanted to go to this month. I realized that I was getting frustrated with everyone who I was interacting with. I got frustrated with my friend who didn't answer the phone at the youth group event, even though he clearly couldn't hear the phone ring, or was busy doing something else. I found myself getting angry at my parents for saying I couldn't use my car to get to the event. I found myself getting pissed at the tow truck driver who was changing the tire, because he was an idiot. Now, was my friend busy? Yes. Did it suck that I wouldn't be able to go to the event? Yes. Was the truck driver not-so-smart? Yup. But overall, it wasn't any of their fault that the tire blew out. It was just the way things played out.

I learned there that it is always easy to blame someone. It isn't always easy to blame no one.