¶ … Universal Compassion" by Natalia Ginzburg
Reading Natalia Ginzburg's essay "Universal Compassion," I felt her dismay. In today's society the victimizer always has an excuse for his actions. It seems as if no one wants to accept responsibility for his or her actions. Everyone is a victim.
Personally, I am weary of the lack of personal accountability that is rampant in the world today. It's almost as if from infancy we learn to blame our errors on someone else. For example, my eight-year-old daughter Jazmine, can give me a million reasons why her homework is not complete. As I listen patiently, I visualize the adult she could become and I inevitably become furious. The scenario, which I see in my mind's eye, is bleak. I see an extraordinarily beautiful woman letting go of life's great prospects escape her because she's too busy making excuses. As I reel myself back to the present I ask, "whose homework is it?" She acknowledges that it is her homework and I inquire, "so whose responsibility is it?" And with that, she looks at me like an eight-year-old who is sure of the fact that her Mother was put on this earth solely to annoy her. And as her annoying Mother I constantly try to reinforce the value I find to be one of the most important: take responsibility for your actions.
This account is precisely the kind of dilemma Ginzburg discusses in her essay, which is determining who among us are the 'victims' and 'oppressors' in a particular situation or event. Ginzburg provides her readers with various solutions to the problem presented in...
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