Years ago, when people would tell me about their problems coping with life, I’d consider the unconscious motivations for their behavior. You know like: “Your father abandoned you at a young age, and of course you’d be scared to trust men. That explains your promiscuity”

Neat package, Too neat. I was bothered by the notion that a bad experience in the past is the cause of a person’s present problems. I also worry about just how much blaming something in the past keeps people stuck and feeling like victims. Kathy, one of the listeners to my talk-radio show, calls to say that at age 25 she is leaving her second marriage. “Kathy,” I ask, at what point did you know that husband No 1 was violent and husband No 2 was on drugs?” “I guess before I married” is her surprisingly frank answer. “My parents were divorced, and my brother died,” she explains. “I was upset.”

Her answer to being “upset” was to walk through the first two doors available. Now she is single with three children from two attempts to bury her emotional pain.

The modern-day “out” or “excuse” for such behavior is generally psychological: “Considering my hurts. Disappointments and traumas, I can't be responsible for the havoc I wreak in the lives of others or the mess I’ve made of my own life. Puhleeese!

Does anyone really believe that only those people graced with great genetics, perfect parentage and ideal social conditions can – and will – behave with character, courage and conscience? Does anyone really believe that laziness and gutlessness are products only of some form of psychoneurosis? Nonsense.

Call me a heretic, but I believe that even with bad stuff in your past, you have choices. Everyone must overcome something. That simply is life. Of course, the typical rejoinder is “How dare you blame the victim for his unhappiness?” But there is a big difference between blaming the victim and trying to get across the fact that it is within his power to gather courage and move on.

Nobody is acknowledged to have free will or responsibility anymore; we have become a nation of excuses and victims. Victimization is today’s Promised Land of absolution from personal responsibility. A “Frank and Ernest” comic strip shows two “bums” sitting along a wall and conversing. One says to the other, “Do you believe in fate?” The other replies, “Sure. I’d hate to think I turned out like this because of something I had control over!”

Acknowledging that you are responsible for messing up your own life is admittedly very upsetting. But it is that very acknowledgement that gives you the power to change things.

Editor’s note: Once you are successful in dealing with your own problems in life you are expected to continue doing it. However if you can offer youself an excuse not to do anything, in your own mind, you never have to accept responsibility for your own actions. Excuses last a life time.