A number of years ago, a friend and I were traveling to and from New York City together. While we were at Grand Central Station, grabbing a bite to eat before our train left, someone stole my friend’s purse. She’d left it underneath her seat.
My friend was very upset, as anyone would be. In her upset, she blamed me for not warning her not to put her purse under the chair. While we had both lived in NYC in the past, I’d lived there longer and she saw me as a more experienced traveler than she was, so why hadn’t I told her to keep her purse close to her?
Eventually, my friend replaced her credit cards, her passport and her phone. She could never replace the photos that had lived only on her stolen phone.
Our friendship was never the same after that. My friend never forgave me for not having warned her about the possibility that her purse could be stolen in Grand Central Station.
Brené Brown says blame “is simply the discharging of discomfort and pain. It has an inverse relationship with accountability. Blaming is a a way that we discharge anger.”
Blame is also a way to feel in control. My friend felt better blaming me than sitting with the feeling that she had no control over what happened.
Anger also felt better, I imagine, than the sinking feeling that she’d made a mistake by putting her purse under her chair.
But it’s difficult to have a conversation when you lead with blame.
I felt terrible when my friend’s purse got stolen. I felt worse when she blamed me. I didn’t want to add to her misery by saying, “What’s your part in this?” but I wanted to.
I didn’t say anything except “I’m sorry.”
I hoped when she calmed down she would realize this wasn’t my fault and she would apologize to me. She did calm down but she never apologized.
When I met up with her years later, in a group of friends, she referred to the incident as “the time Diane didn’t have my back in NYC.”
I use blame, too. We all do. But I like to think I’ve learned to move past blame, even if it’s my first response.
If we stay stuck in blame, we don’t learn any lessons. We don’t get to the point where we say, “Well, I’ve learned never to leave my purse under my seat in Grand Central Station.”
There are so many things in life we can’t control. Purses get stolen, blame gets assigned. Focusing on what we can’t control—and what someone else did or didn’t do—doesn’t serve us.
Focusing on what we can control serves us. Focusing on what we can learn from this (any) situation serves us.
I still feel bad my friend lost her purse. What she took from that day was that she couldn’t trust me. What I learned was that blame doesn’t serve–any of us.