About Getting Well

"Good experience" was my father's euphemism for a "bad job." - Joseph Epstein

Going forward, accountability is a word that will be on the lips of most of us. To be accountable is, first of all, to understand about one's life direction.

There is an illusion that accountability is about "getting even." But that is an impossible demand. When a horrid injustice is done, its effects are indelible, like a tattoo. Schemes of retribution, revenge, deterrence all lead to the same dead end, a blindness to how the mistakes of others are now become a part of us. How can we repay the years an innocent has lived on death row? How can an IED injury be completely eradicated? How can we manage our ire as trickle down economics is revealed as a hoax?

Accountability is about getting well. Some call it forgiveness. Others call it restoration, rebuilding. Rebuilding begins in remembering what is real and who is involved. These recollections are like a pebble cast into a pond. They ripple and touch all of the other drops of water there. So it is with accountability. We affect one another for good or ill. My decisions and actions impinge on those around me. And when I have acted badly, they damage others. It is the sad illusion of retribution that the offender bears the weight of a mistake. The truth is that when an accounting comes, the actor and the victim are all involved. But there is still a distinction to be made. "Some are guilty, but all are responsible," Rabbi Abraham Heschel reminds us. Rebuilding happens when the guilty new direction, even as all participate in the search for new direction. And all, victims AND perpetrators are essential to a dialogue that gets to wholeness.

Getting well in our time, then, will focus on questions like these:
+ What is needed to heal all parties involved?
+ What is needed by the harmed?
+ Who can provide the solutions?

Whether it is the so called war on terror, the indifference around hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the housing and equity markets, or the old staples of gender and race discrimination; healing is not just for the guilty. Retribution against the offender, in the end, does not bring health. (Gandhi is reputed once to have said it this way, "An eye for an eye and soon we'll all be blind.") Punishment cannot be the core question of restoration. We will need to find a way to engage the guilty in ways that bring us all into the problem solving.

If you are like me, the past decade has left you tired, depleted. As one wag puts it, "when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging." That is a great place to start. We need to prepare to face the accountability questions in the coming months. If we can stop digging, later we will find in restoration a wonderful source of energy. But for now, just to rest is a good place to be.