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If not me, then who?

I lived, I was. For everything in the world, I answer with my head.

A. Tvardovsky

Responsibility is a concept of constitutional, civil, criminal, but most importantly – moral. As a moral concept, responsibility is close to the concept of conscience. And the moral law… it’s not on paper, it’s inside us.

The range of human responsibility is very great: from “for those who have tamed,” to “now we are responsible for the country, for the people, for everything in the world.” The responsible person will never commit immoral acts. The highest responsibility in the “hour of the year” has always been a characteristic feature of our people.

Theoretically, everyone understands: from childhood it is necessary to bring up responsibility for what the child can do. Each schoolboy is explained that he should be responsible for his actions, responsibly approach to study, friends. Parents teach us to be responsible

for the younger in the family, to take responsibility for their responsibilities in the home. In the literature, there are many examples of what happens if a person acts irresponsibly in relation to family, friends, work. It would seem that all this should exclude irresponsible actions from human life. But… Because of someone’s irresponsibility, Chernobyl rushed, and the responsible people rushed into the deadly fire for our salvation. Someone irresponsible closed the glacier tracking service – as a result of the catastrophe in North Ossetia, the death of people, among whom was the beloved artist and director Sergei Bodrov, Jr.. The training missile aimed by an irresponsible hand hit the plane. The tragic results of an irresponsible attitude to the case – this is perhaps the worst thing, because it can lead to the death of innocent people.

But the irresponsible promises of politicians, officials, public figures destroy faith in power, in justice, in the opportunity to live according to established laws. Our election campaigns give us hundreds of examples of how loud promises, sworn assurances

hang in the air, remain empty words. Just one example: I saw my native street clean and lit only a month before the last election. My parents went to vote on such a street. And two days later she again plunged into the darkness, the wind carried garbage all over the street, without warning, the water was turned off for a whole day… Maybe someone who promised us the order was not elected? So after all, all the candidates promised only good. Someone is still elected! Where are his promises? I believe that now there is still a time when, in power, deceiving with promises, for which then do not answer, go for mercenary motives. Otherwise, such irresponsibility can not be explained. But I’m an optimist: this position, maybe, and long-term, but still temporary.

All of us who live on this earth are responsible. For what? For that in the world good and justice triumphed. To whom? Before all who are around. Anyone who knows how to answer for loved ones will be able to be responsible on a state scale. The person responsible for something answers first of all before his conscience. There is no higher and fairer judge. A person with a developed sense of responsibility always faces a question: “If not me, then who?” And he decides it according to his conscience.

Probably, there are such people. They were in the past. Will be in the centuries to come. But they do not characterize the nation, the people and any community of people: the population of my city, the inhabitants of our home, my school teachers and comrades. Still, most people have a sense of compassion.

The theme of sympathy for those who are in trouble, sounds in many works of Russian classical literature. In Russia, pity and compassion have always been caused by prisoners – offended, as the people believed, and punished by power people. Compassion does not ask why a person is convicted. He has already been punished for what he did, and now he must be pitied. Recently I read this story, a Russian poet of the XVIII century V. Trediakovsky went to watch the execution of the rebel Emelyan Pugachev, whom he considered an enemy of the empire and whose actions he publicly condemned. Before putting his head on the block, Pugachev asked the Orthodox people for forgiveness and looked around the crowd. And suddenly I met my eyes with Trediakovsky, whom I recognized. Approached by the empress, the poet should have triumphed that a rebel and troublemaker would now cut off his head. So, probably, thought Pugachev. But there was no celebration in Trediakovsky’s eyes. The condemned read them pain, pity, and compassion. The poet himself, hurrying to the Place of Execution, did not expect such feelings from himself. The author ends the story thus: “Out of this compassion all Russian literature has come out.”

AS Pushkin “mercy to the fallen called to” and sympathized with the prisoner, sitting “behind bars, in a damp damp”. Compassion for the Decembrists, exiled to Siberia, is imbued with N. Nekrasov’s poem “Russian Women.” And it was written almost half a century after the December events. The whole novel of Leo Tolstoy “Resurrection” is a novel about compassion, about awareness of guilt and the desire to atone for it. In the novel War and Peace, the writer describes how Field Marshal M. Kutuzov travels around the formation of Russian soldiers who defeated the French and turned the enemy to flight. Kutuzov thanks warriors for hard work, for heroism and fearlessness. But, welcoming the winners, he does not forget to say that a broken, freezing and fleeing Frenchman can now be treated like a human and regret. There are many examples of this in the literature and in life. The Christian religion is based on charity. Familiar to the whole world Mother Teresa for her unselfish and selfless work – helping the sick, homeless and suffering – was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Although not for the sake of rewards, I think that this legendary woman worked all her life.

Compassion is born when you felt sorry for a nestling who had fallen from the nest and brought it home. When you cry, reading how the topic was looking for its Beetle. When you are ready to give your cutlet to someone else’s hungry dog. When you regret tired after work mom and do her household chores. And may you be powerless to help the victims of earthquakes and floods, the hostages of Nord-Ost and those who died in the skyscrapers of Manhattan, but the feeling of compassion will not allow you to switch the channel and turn away from human pain.

In our life, despite its rigidity, people who are able to sympathize, condole, sympathize, more than soulless. Compassion is the natural state of man, and human nature does not change so quickly. Therefore, we are far from being zombies and not mankurts: compassion has a place in our hearts. To a modern man, I believe, one must learn effective sympathy. Here it is still a rarity in our lives.