I read many posts and emails about bad times, awful luck, how rotten life has become, and general missives on the subject of being a victim. I think we all feel those same feelings now and again in our lives. I have felt that way before.

We want to blame someone or some thing for our conditions. It is only human to want to do that.

Going through my divorce, the sale of my home of 23 years and the financial disaster that those actions brought, I did a lot of blaming and finger-pointing. I still have nightmares about it, the times when I kept losing weight, getting sued by creditors, showing up in court with my half-drunk attorney.

Then I started realigning things and went into a one-year retreat on my sister's rural ranch in California. I spent most of that time trying to finish the marriage off and trying to reinvent my life. During that episode it occurred to me that everything that has ever happened to me in my entire life was basically my own fault.

That revelation changed my universe.

Once I grasped the concept, the rest was easy. I quit blaming the whore ex-wife, the IRS, the government guys, the lawyers, the crazy speed-freak woman who tried to kill me with her three-ton S.U.V., the kid who stole my bicycle, the U.S. Army (and Charlie, the Vietcong guy), the Soviet Union, the professor who rejected my first Master's thesis seven times, Satan, Sigmund Freud, and a whole list of other people and entities who populated my Shat List. I realized that at nearly every turn in my life I could have easily made better decisions and thereby avoided all those troubles!

The concept of admitting our responsibility for making bad choices is an old school concept. Psychiatrists and analysts these days preach the doctrine "It's Not Your Fault." Except for most medical situations (other than being overweight or bad dietary habits) that is total Bullshat! Everything is our fault.

We all make bad choices, decisions on life's path that put us right where we were heading and where are today. I sure did. I have spent some time analyzing those "forks in the road" on my own life's path and I can detail many, many times where I screwed up.

They were all my fault and I accept it.

The best thing to do is to own up to our dumb bunny choices, learn from them, and go on with life without making the past the present.

I'm done. Class dismissed.