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Phrase: Shoulder the blame
Many people are quite willing to blame others when things go sideways, but few volunteer to shoulder the blame themselves.
Think about blame as a heavy burden that people have to carry.
Often, we may carry something heavy on our shoulders.
Therefore, we can use the word shoulder as a verb to mean carry something substantial.
In the idiom shoulder, the blame a person accepts responsibility for something terrible or extremely challenging.
Shouldering the blame is rarely an easy thing to do, but it is often the right thing to do.
When you are responsible for a wrong decision or outcome, you should not let others be the fall guy for your mistake or lack of judgment.
Taking responsibility for our actions is one of the virtues we try as a society to teach our children.
Unfortunately, children learn best when following the example of their elders.
If we want to raise our children to turn into responsible adults, we have to lead by example.
There is no other way.
Therefore, whenever we make a mistake, we should be willing to shoulder the blame instead of placing it on someone else’s shoulders.
Once in a blue moon, someone will step up to shoulder the blame even when they are not responsible for the outcome.
Take our little pigeon friend there.
He is quite willing to shoulder the blame for whatever it is you want to blame him for.
You may think he is a great guy, but then you have to wonder, if a pigeon doesn’t have shoulders, how can he shoulder the blame for anything?
His selflessness doesn’t seem so great now, does it?
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 68.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.