Responsibilities.....do we take them or not?

It's said that a person grows in life when he takes responsibilities. This sentence was always in my mind since I had heard it the for first time but I never could believe in that unless I took up my first major responsibility in life - that of
quitting my dream of playing cricket for India & owning the responsibility of earning for my family(in a secure settled way through a job). I had an empty hollow feeling the moment I took this hard decision & I couldn't gather my self completely for the next couple of days. I decided to be with myself & not interact much with anyone inside or outside the house just to let the feeling sink down me completely. And when it did I felt elated. I felt that something new had dawned on me & I realised that my life had taken a new dimension & direction, a dimension of responsibility & a direction of growth. For the first time I could bring light to the aforementioned saying in my mind. Since then I have taken many more responsibilities, some small & others sizeably big & the only thing that has kept me ticking on in life without making much of a fuss about these responsibilities is my desire to grow in life according to my own standards & judgement. I have realised that earning a lot of money is just a path or vehicle of success, it's not the success itself. If you are rich but don't understand the value of your money then you haven't gone much distance as regards the growth in life.

And it's not just the growth that matters when thinking of responsibilities. When you become responsible, there are so many other important qualities that flower in you & that are necessary ingredients in anyone's life. You own the responsibility for looking after someone's baby for just an hour & in that you learn committment, adaptability, adjustability, patience, stress management(child management too maybe!). It also really depends on the extent to which you own the responsibility in your heart. That's why I feel that the degree of responsibility doesn't depend on the amount of work or importance attached with that responsibility but the degree to which you feel committed to fulfill that responsibility.

Coming back to whether one should take responsibilities in one's life or not wholly depends on the situation. If you feel
that you want to grow in life by taking responsibilities you may do so. Or else if a situation forces you to take
responsibility(like in my case), then you may do so. But either way you will learn all that is offered to you provided you
fulfill your responsibility. And that's exactly the reason why you can never be bogged down or weakened by your
responsibilities because it's you who decide to take them or otherwise. If anything, you will always grow stronger & wiser that's what I believe. Yes there are other things like you cannot do what you wanted to do because you had to be responsible for something else but remember that life is a game that cannot be played wholly by the heart, sometimes the mind is also right & it's you who has to acknowledge that & that's what I guess is called wisdom. Also I learnt that sorrow & defeats also play an equally important if not more important role in our lives as happiness & victories. So let's intelligently gear up for new responsibilities & cheerfully fulfill them man! Afterall if we decide to smile then not even God can take it away!