Let’s begin with a little fable found online: “This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

“There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.”

This wordplay parable about responsibility and blame should speak loud and clear to our age. More than 275 million adults currently live in the United States, but that number thins considerably when we count the number who are grownups, that is, those who understand and accept responsibility for their actions and their lives and deal rationally and maturely with the consequences when things go awry.

How Not to Be an Adult

Today’s political arena provides plenty of examples of adolescent adults.

The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, for example, damaged the education of millions of schoolchildren, ruined thousands of businesses, and dramatically increased rates of anxiety and depression. Evidence exists showing that the vaccines specific to COVID-19 likely injured the physical health of untold thousands of people. Yet few of the politicians and bureaucrats who directed these measures confessed to the possibility of mistakes, and no one resigned from a government office or position to atone for his missteps.

The same holds true of failures on other fronts: the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the massive government expenditures by both Republicans and Democrats on all sorts of ridiculous projects while our national debt races toward the $40 trillion mark, and the recent exposure of widespread fraud in our social services sector. Silence and a shrug are the official reaction to such calamities.

Many individual Americans exhibit the same irresponsibility by claiming victimhood of one kind or another, a frame of mind that would never occur to a real grownup: the middle-aged woman who credits all the ills in her life to a misbegotten childhood, the bankrupt entrepreneur who blames his failure on everything but personal accountability, and the multitudes who point to racism, sexism, or the “system” as their oppressors.

When failure lands on their doorstep and someone or something must be blamed, these adults point fingers everywhere but at themselves.

Owning Our Failures

In “The Great Divorce,” C.S. Lewis tells of a bus that takes souls from hell to heaven, where they are given the chance to remain in that paradise. However, most of these visitors opt to get back on the bus and return to hell, still convinced that the sins they’ve committed and the wrongs they’ve done to others are justified. They refuse to own their failures.

In American history we find plenty of men and women who took a contrary path, who made themselves accountable when hard choices might bring severe consequences. President Harry Truman, who famously had a plaque stating “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk in the Oval Office, was noted for making tough calls, including the dropping of atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan.

When Gen. Dwight Eisenhower commanded the armies invading Normandy on D-Day, he wrote out a never-sent memo just before that assault noting that he should be held personally responsible in case the invasion failed.

Writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston took charge of her life and refused to become a victim to the prejudices against her race and sex, writing, “No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

But claiming responsibility isn’t enough. It also means taking the hits when everything falls apart.

Skin in the Game

Here we can again turn to the past for examples of responsibility in the face of failure.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration of Independence are preceded by this sentence: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Those men who signed that document knew full well that if their cause was lost, they could be imprisoned or executed as traitors. Those signatures provide a definition in full of responsibility.

After Pickett’s Charge failed to break Union lines at the Battle of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee looked at the survivors stumbling back to safety and was reported to have said: “This is my fault! This is all my fault!” That’s ownership, but Lee took the next step as well, which is bearing the consequence of failure. A month after the battle, he submitted his resignation to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. Davis refused to accept the resignation, but Lee’s offer demonstrated a readiness to pay the penalty for failure.

In 1982, a person or persons bought bottles of Tylenol, opened them, replaced some of the pills with pills dosed with cyanide, and returned the bottles to the store shelves. Seven people died in agony. Over the next few weeks, the story dominated the headlines of newspapers and newscasts.

Despite being innocent of these murders, the manufacturer of Tylenol, Johnson & Johnson, issued a recall of millions of bottles of pills. They reinvented the bottles containing these pain relievers, making them tamper-proof and thus setting a trend for the entire industry. The Johnson & Johnson executives took charge, accepted responsibility, and then paid a massive penalty to make things right. Business expert T. Berge later wrote, “The Tylenol crisis is without a doubt the most exemplary case ever known in the history of crisis communications.”

Most of us have surely witnessed examples of this same acceptance of blame in our daily lives: the friend who realizes that he has wronged us and offers an apology, the alcoholic father who gives up the bottle and spends the rest of his life making amends to his adult children, the teenager who lies to her parents about her whereabouts on a Saturday night and fesses up on Sunday.

Accepting the consequences of our actions, good and bad, is a trademark—perhaps the trademark—of the grownup.

Responsible Adults Are Made, Not Born

Accountability doesn’t come easily and is learned rather than innate. The feckless 40-year-old who denies breaking up his marriage is the parent to the 4-year-old who broke a vase and then claimed, “I didn’t do it!”

Cultivating responsibility begins in childhood with chores and with parents modeling virtues such as civility and kindness toward others. The church I attend, for instance, has a multitude of large families, and on any given Sunday morning girls and boys 8 or 9 years old can be seen accompanying a toddler to the restroom during the service. It’s a heartwarming sight of responsibility in action and always brings me a smile.

Teens learn responsibility through summer jobs and by taking greater charge of their own affairs, such as earning money outside the home, assuming proprietorship of their schoolwork, filling out college and employment applications on their own initiative, and returning home on time from an evening out with friends. As a result, these young people leave home better equipped to take on the obligations of the workplace, marriage, and a family life of their own.

In “The Story of Philosophy,” Will Durant wrote: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” The same holds true for responsibility. Instill the habits of self-discipline and personal accountability in the young, and we give them gifts of character made to last a lifetime.