WET FLOOR
There’s sign the janitor always puts up at work after he mops the restroom. The sign reads, “Caution: Wet Floor.” There’s also an outline drawing of a human figure slipping and falling.
Now that’s useful — not.
The sign doesn’t really do anything to correct the situation, it just posts a warning and leaves it at that. Since my distance vision isn’t as clear as it used to be, if I didn’t already know what the sign meant, I’d want to get a closer look. I can easily imagine walking up to the sign and slipping on the wet floor as I approach, landing smack dab on my keester!
That sign seems about as useful as those signs posted at the base of mountain sides which read, “Beware of Falling Rocks.” What good is the sign as I’m about to be crushed by four tons of boulders, gravel, and dirt from a landslide?
And don’t even get me going on “Bridge Ices Before Road.” Great! That’s just what I need when I’m doing 360’s on an ice glazed bridge with enough forward momentum in my car to jump the guardrail and plummet into a raging river of hypothermia below.
Why not just put up signs that read: Closed for Cleaning, Do Not Enter — Rockslide Occurring, and Road Closed Due to Ice? Now those would be useful. They’d keep me from risking danger.
I guess that’s not really practical, though. I mean, the reason they put that “Wet Floor” sign is because they want to minimize the downtime for the restroom. I know I get a little cranky when I need to drain the goose and see that “Closed for Cleaning” sign draped across the restroom door. Then I have to goosestep my way to another restroom in a hurry. Nor is it practical to station observers at the side of every mountain or on every bridge to close them when either rockslides occur or ice forms on the bridges.
We have to assume some risk. Otherwise, we’d never leave the house. Actually, there’s risk present even inside our houses, too.
The signs provide warnings. They alert us a higher probability of danger exists right now in the space we’re residing within. It’s up to each of us to decide how much risk we’ll assume. The responsibility falls fully on us to either accept the risk or turn around and go back.
Responsibility for our actions really does, and should, reside with each of us. That’s true every second of every day.
We may give up our personal responsibility, by either making a conscious choice or abdicating it to someone else, but we still did allow it to happen. We still own the responsibility for the consequences.
How often have you given up your responsibility and then cast blame on the person you willingly gave it to? Probably more times than you care to admit. I know I have.
Personal responsibility is tied to “free will.” Without personal responsibility, “free will” becomes nothing more than a license to unleash chaos.
That might be fine if we were kings of the universe, but that last time I looked, that wasn’t listed as my job title. Yours neither, I suspect. But, even kings must exert personal responsibility, otherwise they eventually get overthrown.
So, next time you slip and fall, don’t point to the “Caution: Wet Floor” sign and cast blame. Suck it up and face the consequences. You’re the one who chose to walk on the wet floor.
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