SIGNATURE STORIES | 3 min read

Taking Responsibility

Signature Stories is a space for voices and perspectives where guest contributors share reflections and ideas inspired by beauty, ethics and culture, translating our "For a Good Life" values into cultural narratives.

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Written by Pico Iyer,

Guest Contributor

Written by Pico Iyer,

Guest Contributor

A riddle: when does something very heavy suddenly become light? The answer: when you realize that your life has changed forever and your new baby appears screaming in your arms.

Gone is the prospect of easy sleep. Immense seems the weight of paying new bills. Farewell, you say, to free days, careless summers, giving yourself round the clock to that important project and all-consuming passion. In place of the vast green meadow that was your life a day ago you now have a small person—a human life—that you must spend every minute for the next many years helping to nurture and protect.

I think we’ve all felt the paradox of responsibilitytransform our lives.When you’re a child, the coach says, “I’ve named you captain,” and you carry a new weight but feel larger than you’ve ever felt before. An old friend whispers, “I’ll tell you something I’ve never told another being” and you cherish the secret as if it were a diamond locked inside a safe to which only you know the code. You receive a sudden promotion and as you realize you’re now responsible for a hundred times more souls than before, you notice you have to become something you couldn’t conceive of yesterday.

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Responsibility tells us that we don’t live alone; we’re part of a network—of other beings, creatures, trees and streams and air—that all depend on one another.

To protect the environment that surrounds us is the only we can begin to protect ourselves. To do harm to any piece of the unit is to do harm to every other. Redwood trees spread their roots so as to make a whole sturdy enough to withstand centuries. The butterfly effect recalls to us that a touch on any part of our collective body affects the whole.

Responsibility sounds like another word for responsiveness: the wish to listen, to attend and to know that your welfare depends on everything outside you. Bring a child into the world and suddenly you have to take better care of your partner; your son depends on her or him. You start to think about protecting the environment because it will be your daughter’s predicament long after you are gone. You even take better care of yourself, make more selfless decisions, because others depend on your survival and health.

“In dreams begin responsibilities,” the poet wrote, yet what he might have added is that out of responsibilities come new dreams. You step into a concert hall and hear your daughter play that piano concerto, you return home and see your son beam at what he’s discovered through his telescope and you register the happiest surprise of all: the responsibility you’re now carrying you is bringing you a freedom you never imagined.

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It’s only when we step out of our lives that we can truly render them strong, wide and enduring.

About the author

Pico Iyer is the author of 17 books, translated into 23 languages, including such much-loved works as Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk and The Art of Stillness. Four of his works have been best-sellers across the U.S., and his five talks for TED have received more than 12 million views so far. In 2019 he was Ferris Professor at Princeton, Guest Director of the Telluride Film Festival and the first official writer-in-residence at Raffles Hotel, Singapore. Born in Oxford, England, he was educated at Eton, Oxford and Harvard and has been based since 1987 in Western Japan.

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