Breaking Walls; Building Leaders

Recently, I’ve been pondering responsibility.

Responsibility: the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.

-Oxford Languages

What does personal responsibility look like? According to the definition above, it is being accountable to yourself. Somehow that doesn’t clarify my confusion, it just brings more questions.

What does being accountable to yourself look like? Well, accountability is defined as,

Accountable: required or expected to justify actions or decisions; responsible.

-New Oxford American Dictionary

So, if I am being accountable to myself, then I should be required or expected to justify my actions, i.e. I need to be responsible. What does responsibility look like?

Wait a second, I already asked that question. Did I just run in circles?

When I signed up for this World Race, Journey School, Study Abroad, Mission Trip, Pilot Program, I wanted to grow in my faith, my agency, my trust, and my responsibility. What I never expected, was how intertwined these things are.

As illustrated above, responsibility is to be accountable for your actions and accountability is to be expected (or sometimes required) to justify your actions, decisions, or even your intentions.

Over the past 11 days we’ve been in Spain, I have had the blessing to be exposed to the extreme creative process that is Journey School or World Race: Study Abroad, and this process has forced me to embrace my own personal responsibility in ways I never would have normally.

My experience with the Journey School so far has been one of stretching and learning what it means to be responsible for myself. I have had the opportunity to help create certain aspects of this program with our founder/visionary Seth Barnes and sit in on meetings with him, discussing the future of this trip, even after my team leaves the field.

I have seen personal responsibility and accountability lived out through my Squad leaders and Seth, but still there is something mystical and confounding about personal responsibility. That mysticism, I think, comes from its somewhat circular nature I showed above.

When you are sitting on your couch at home, this idea of personal responsibility doesn’t make any sense, it only makes sense when you act upon it. That is why I thank God for this opportunity to help pilot one of the first Journey School trips, it gives me the outlet and the authority to exercise accountability and responsibility.

Each person on our team has a role, some are hospitality, others are treasurers, still more are anything from health and safety, to worship and academics. Me personally, I am Logistics. All of us have an outlet to exercise responsibility.

I pray that more young adults would jump into the real world and use their skills for a purpose, instead of only serving themselves. According to a poll from Bloomberg, 49% of young adults from ages 18 to 29 are still living with their parents. Personal responsibility in younger generations is lacking. If young adults would just do something, anything, then I think we would see a dramatic increase in personal responsibility and accountability.

It is hard to break down the walls of comfortability that lock us into a place of low drive, low accountability, and lack of responsibility. However, it is only once those walls have been broken that we can rebuild ourselves into the leaders this world needs.