Taking responsibility and staying financially accountable (@iskafan)

Sean had just confessed to the crime that he committed in the past, shattering the world of Lisa and leaving her devasted. He murdered someone in the past because the man was trying to rape his ex. He got angry and beat him to death. It had been many years down the line and he thought he could bury the past in the past, but Anne had different plans for him when she wanted access to his wife, Lisa, and her company, Emigen.

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Anne had used his past as a thumbscrew to get him right where she wanted. His insecure and uncontrollable emotions about the dead man and how he couldn't proceed with his dream had eaten him up for so long and even when he was happily married to Lisa, he never stopped digging information about the murder of that man. I don't know what he was looking for...maybe he wanted to keep abreast with the development on the case and see if anyone had caught into anything.

Apart from this, he blurted out what happened between him and Anne, the night they signed a non-disclosure contract. And this move gave Anne a chance to take Emigen, the company that Lisa had built her entire life.

As it stood, he was the weakest link to get to Lisa and everything else that happened had him wrapped around Anne's fingers, just like the game of Chess, Anne worked the pieces on the board until she got what she wanted.

A Hallmark of weakness

When everything settled down and Anne offers Sean a chance at a fresh start and he rejected her offer, she chuckled. Sean felt Anne had destroyed Lisa's life just to make a huge profit off the company she worked for and he felt as though he betrayed Lisa by breaking the contract that gave Anne what she wanted. Out of guilt, he rejected Anne's offer but not after pointing fingers at her for being the master strategist who took everything from the Love of his life. This is where Anne laughed as says something that struck me;

A Hallmark of weakness: Blaming failure on eternal circumstances What If

Pointing Fingers

It made me pause and think deeply because I remember we are supposed to take responsibility for our actions. At least that what's we've been taught to do if we were trying to be better people. But we always look for a way to point fingers at other people for how things go with our lives especially if they go wrong and not exactly as rosy as we expected.

Financial Failures

You see even with our finances, we do this. If we fall into the holes of debts, we look at the external influences. We point fingers at the media for flashing those shiny adult toys at us.

We blame our friends for luring us to spend excessively on things that did not bring us happiness. We blame our partners for being extravagant or not financially supportive.

We look for anyone or anything we will pass the blame on so we can feel better about what we did. This way, our guilt will wash away with loathing at others instead of ourselves.

Taking responsibility

Whereas we were supposed to look inward. We were supposed to look at how our ego did not allow us to see that trying to keep up with the Joneses wouldn't bring us happiness. We were supposed to look at how it made us not learn self-discipline and resist the urge to buy stuff because the media advertised them.

We were supposed to look inward and see that we could have learned to sit our partners down and tried to work out our financial obligations together; so we wouldn't get into debt or end up with a house full of liabilities that constantly reminded us that we are out of funds to even sort out the nearest emergency.

Being accountable

We are to blame. But we always look for scapegoats. The day we accept that we are supposed to be disciplined enough to say no and to stand by it, we will continue to be dragged out in the open to spend more than we earn and drown in debt.

If we don't try to understand ourselves, look inward, and rid ourselves of the ego that sabotages our financial positions then we will continue to be lured into sacrificing many days, weeks, months of hustling on an expensive bottle of wine, an expensive pot of pepper soup, or even an expensive car that could be repossessed if we default on payment.

The battle line should be drawn because just as Anne said,