I was walking around the street doing my usual morning routine. I held an old umbrella on my hand, and I looked up at the sunny sky and thought about opening my umbrella to protect myself from the sun.

I clicked on the button that automatically opened the umbrella, then I heard a quick snap. I look towards my hand and the handle holding the button collapsed.

The button yeeted itself out of the handle and the handle cracked and fell on the street.

I stood there, dazed, for a good second, trying to process what the hell happened. After a short while, I grabbed the pieces and tried putting them back together.

After some trial and error, I already knew I wasn’t going to fix it. So, I continued walking and thought about every possible excuse for my sister so she wouldn’t get mad at me.

I was thinking of every possible excuse thinking of ways of making the breaking of the umbrella, not my problem and my fault. I thought about setting my sister up thinking she was the one who broke it. I could also blame my brother for it.

It was at that moment, right as I was about to turn left on the corner street, I had a realization.

I slapped myself in the face, taking me away from my thoughts. “What the hell am I thinking?”

Why can’t I just own up to the problem like a real accountable person?!

I’ve been reading stuff up about full accountability and responsibility, but I can’t apply it to something simple. Why do I have to push the blame on someone else when I was the one who broke it?

What’s with this selective shit? I know I could be accountable for heavy tasks, but when it comes to simple trivial everyday stuff, I can’t do it. Why the heck is up with that? What’s with the hypocrisy?

It was at that moment when I had flashbacks of the times when I did similar things, but this time I’m vividly aware of what’s happening in my head. I was so disgusted, appalled, and frustrated that I kept acting this way and I never even thought about changing it!

It’s obvious to me that I’ve only been selectively accountable towards the things I can control only when it’s convenient to me. If something’s trivial such as doing basic chores that were asked of me, I never take responsibility. Why? It’s because I think it’s unimportant.

However, what’s happening there is that I’m allowing myself to never be accountable for every action that I do. And, that’s not how I want to live my life. I want to be fully responsible for what I do regardless of the consequence especially if it’s bad.

So, what made this hypocrisy different from every time I was accountable? Is it because of the scope? Is it because of the size of the problem that I can’t take something accountable? I don’t know! But one thing’s clear. I need to fix this shit.

I shook my head with a newfound resolve. I went home, and I walked up to my sister and told her that I broke the umbrella. No excuses, I just told her straight up.

I didn’t tell her it was an accident or something that happened by chance. I broke it. Period, nothing is going on about it.

When I told her, she got mad. She was livid. It was our only umbrella but after that. I felt good not because I was scolded but because I was honest to myself and kept my integrity by telling the truth – it’s a step in the right direction.

Just doing that simple thing made me rooted in my real priorities and values, and it’s something that I would always strive for. It’s inflexible, I know. But, that simple thing that I did was because that’s what I want to be as a person, not anything else. It’s a part of who I want to embody.

This story would serve as a reminder that I could always be a hypocrite. I can learn something new and apply it to something big, but I may never apply it to something small or trivial and vice-versa. In times like this, I need to reflect deeply on the smallest things I do because those are the things that compose most of my life – the small things.