Shifting the blame and taking accountability | Ron Colon | Columnist

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In early January, a star receiver in the National Football League made headlines by taking off his uniform on the sidelines, starting with his helmet, then his jersey, his shoulder pads and his undershirt, leaving him bare above the waist. He ran across the field and through the end zone, waving and flashing the peace sign to the 80,000 people in the stands and the millions watching on TV before ducking through the tunnel and exiting the stadium — in the middle of a game!

No one knew what was going on until a few hours later, when he released a statement saying he was upset because the team was forcing him to play with an injury. The team denied the charge, and a few days later, after he refused to undergo mental health evaluation and therapy, the player was cut from the squad.

It wasn’t the first time.

A month earlier, he was suspended for three games for forging a vaccination card, saying he had been vaccinated for COVID when he wasn’t.

Before that was an eight-game suspension after he was arrested for attacking the driver of a moving van who was delivering his home furnishings.

The year before that, he was cut by a different team one game into the season, following accusations of repeated sexual offenses against a team trainer.

Before that, he was cut from a different team for missing practices and arguing with upper management, and before that, he was let go from his first professional team for supposedly getting in a fight with the star quarterback.

And all of that came after an incident in college, where he got expelled from the university before ever playing a single game, also for fighting.

In a recent TV interview, the player said, “Everything I did, I did it because my heart believed it was what I needed to do. And in life, sometimes, you got to listen to your heart because that’s the only way I could go to sleep at night.”

I watched it and I heard it, and I thought, that sounds good but it’s not the truth. It felt to me that what he’s calling his heart is not his heart; it’s lack of discipline and uncontrolled fury.

League representatives, sportswriters, and radio and TV commentators have been using this incident to further the discussion on the importance of mental health, but I’m using it to shine a light on ourselves and the tendency of self-delusion, specifically, the impulse to place blame elsewhere.

We blame it on our heart, like he did.

We blame it on God, the government, the system, the world and how things work.

We blame other people for not communicating, not understanding, and for not having their priorities straight. We blame it on midnight, on the moonlight, on luck and looks and finances and connections, prejudice, injustice, love, family, fate and destiny.

Often times, it’s a reflex, an automatic response where our first impulse is to place the focus on someone else, and what they did or said that was wrong, in the process glossing over our own faults or misplays. This happens even for people who genuinely are committed to self-study and to learning from mistakes.

When the initial reactive energy starts to settle down, we may, then, begin to turn the spotlight back upon ourselves to consider our own words and actions.

We can reduce that time between reflex and reflection, and maybe lessen the frequency of unconscious action by training ourselves to ask: What is my role in this current reality, and what can I do to learn, change and improve?

Some might ask, to what end? Is it to conform, and not make waves? I say, so that we are not battered by the waves or blown by the winds, against our wishes and in ways that disempower us, making us feel that we have less control over ourselves and our situations than we really do.

I point to the renegade receiver and thank him for reminding me of this lesson.

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