Whom do we blame and for what? – two critical questions, whether they apply to our view of others or ourselves.

A high school classmate and I have an ongoing dialogue about which of our human capacities dominates – cognition or emotion. He would say that our rational mind can and should prevail. While I often wish that were the case, I proffer that despite the power of our executive function, many times our emotions take over, especially when dealing with our fears.

In and of itself, finding fault, which is one definition of “blame,” can be a neutral dynamic. It is a way that our “head” identifies the source of events or circumstances. Knowing the cause of a situation often mitigates its threat. Replacing the unknown with knowledge provides us a way of managing if not controlling what confronts us.

At the same time embedded in “blame” is judgment, and judgment is one way our “heart” seeks to protect us from potential threats. We see too many examples of the emotional blame game in play every day in relationships, politics, religion and culture, where our tribal roots tilt the teeter-totter of fake versus fact.

Perhaps more pernicious is the blame game we play with ourselves when we judge ourselves as inadequate or unworthy. Who is to blame – our upbringing, our workplace, our partner? While those may indeed be the source of fault, we are the sole agents of changing the game going forward.

Harnessing the wisdom of both head and heart, we have the capacity, indeed, the response-ability, to create a new future for ourselves individually and collectively. We do control the two ingredients that can do most to lift us out of blaming others and ourselves – our attitude and our effort.

The power has been out in our community for two days, and our local co-op forecasts that for some of us the outage will last another 24-36 hours. While we in northern New England have learned to prepare for this form of March madness, the blizzard calls us back to basics. I think of two for this post.

The first is how much I take for granted. Focusing first on the mundane: flipping a switch to see in the dark: turning a tap for running water; pressing a handle to flush a toilet; opening the fridge or the freezer for food; taking a hot shower at day’s end.

It doesn’t take long for those mundane daily “dos” to morph into the realization that there are many in our world whose power is perpetually out, who scramble each day for food, shelter and safety. There is also the realization that our power grid is a network that is vulnerable not only to mother nature but to human malevolence.

The second basic lesson derives from the first: gratitude. Peggy and I have shelter and sufficient experience and resources to manage the inconveniences of this outage. We know that dedicated men and women are working under very demanding conditions to restore the power. We also know that neighbors are checking in with each other, especially the elderly, to make sure they have the essentials they need.

The Chinese pictograph for our word “crisis” combines images for “danger” and “opportunity.” The danger accompanying a blizzard holds the opportunity for each of us to stop taking our lives and life styles for granted and return to the ground of gratitude for self-reliance as well as interdependence with others in community.