Some of us were the “responsible child” in our families. The responsible child takes responsibility from the beginning. He would try to help his parents at work, at the shop, and at home. He took responsibility for younger siblings, got them ready for school, and helped them with their studies. He would stand up for his family in society, and as he grew up, he would try to ensure his younger siblings’ education and get them married. His shoulders grew used to carrying the weight of responsibility from the beginning. What does he get in return? The tag of being responsible. Wherever he goes, people praise him and validate that tag, and he keeps it close to his heart as if it were the most precious possession of his life.

It’s very easy to manipulate such a child. You just need to tell him he is not behaving responsibly, and he’ll do anything to get that tag back. As he grows up, he takes responsibility in office. He puts in extra hours, works overtime, and works weekends. Soon, colleagues and bosses learn to manipulate “the responsible child”: tell him how important he is to the organisation, then load their expectations onto his shoulders. He marries, and the same thing happens at home. He carries the weight of being a responsible family man or woman.

Why should one be responsible for the others? Responsibility without healthy boundaries is actually quite dangerous. It harms both people: the one taking responsibility and the one whose responsibility is being taken. When you support someone, you make them dependent, and they fail to grow. Everybody has to learn their lessons in this life and grow. When parents take responsibility for their children’s happiness, they try to provide them with everything they need or want. The more they provide, the greater the children’s sense of entitlement. In the process, children don’t grow emotionally mature, and when parents can no longer provide what they want, they start holding parents responsible. Thus, taking responsibility for someone else’s happiness harms us in two ways. First, because of that dependency, the other person refuses to grow; second, when he doesn’t grow and work hard himself, he doesn’t recognise the cost. That’s why he often wastes the hard-earned resources. That’s why he often disrespects the hard work the “responsible child” puts in.

But why, in the first place, would someone take responsibility for the other’s happiness? Everybody should be responsible for themselves. Does that mean we should not help each other? Why not. We should definitely help each other. But there is a stark difference between helping someone and being responsible for them. When we water a plant, we help it, but we don’t become responsible for its growth. When we feed the birds, we do not become responsible for them to fly. We can help someone, but we can’t be responsible for them. We can care for children and provide resources, good education, and the like. But it is their own journey, and they have to work hard to grow. Even if we try to help them reach a position using our connections, they will soon develop a complex. If you put them in an organisation in a position that they have not earned themselves, they will develop either an inferiority complex or a superiority complex, and if that persists, they are bound to develop psychological disorders.

Life is not just about survival. That’s a very limited meaning of life. Of course survival is important, but that can’t be the purpose of life. Had that been the case, so many freedom fighters would not have given away their lives for freedom. So many people would not have died for love. Life is for love and exploration. When we love someone, we explore them. When we love nature, we explore nature. Exploration makes us move beyond our fixed frameworks of life. We learn so many new things. A child who was reluctant to leave their parents even for a few hours learns to live in a foreign country. When we take responsibility for someone who doesn’t want to grow, we deprive that person of the “crises” they need to grow, and we also deprive ourselves of the chance to break free of life’s frameworks.

If we come out of the well and see the open sky, we have a responsibility to go back and tell the people there to come out, because we owe them that. With their help and support, we could come out of the well, and now, because we have found something profound, we would like to share it with them. But if they don’t want to come out, we’re not responsible for staying in the well. That’s good for no one. Once they make their choice, even knowing about the open sky, a wise person will not stay in the well out of a sense of responsibility. Responsibility will always help others rise and not make oneself fall. If he decides to stay in the well, even after seeing the open sky, he will be frustrated by the waste of his potential in the limited space; the people inside the well will not realise his pain because they lack the capacity to appreciate what lies outside. The longer he lives in the well, the more strained their relationship will become. The feeling of being used will grow in both their minds with each passing day. Because “being used” means something different to each of them. The one who returned from the sea will see his potential being wasted. The person inside the well will feel that the “responsible child” is not as responsible as he used to be. It’s a lose-lose situation. That’s why, having seen the sea, there is no option to live happily inside the well again.