So. Much. This - "The Blame Game | Mark's Daily Apple"

More at the link, but this resonated. For me personally, and folks I've known.

The Blame Game | Mark's Daily Apple:

"...We all know people who have relegated themselves to living some half-developed life, meanwhile nursing a long-past resentment or irrational choice that continually holds them back... Maybe they blame their upbringing – the habits they feel are too ingrained or what they see as the insurmountable challenge of getting beyond obesity and/or health conditions they’ve accepted over the years. Some people feel they’re too far gone to get up again.

Others blame their uncooperative spouses or their kids and the chaos of family life. Still other people tell themselves progress just isn’t possible given their financial situation, work schedule, or aggregate life demands. They’re already juggling too much and can’t give up any part of the routine. They can’t find it in themselves to simplify their act, so to speak, or just renounce it entirely to search for a better way. In other words, some folks can’t find their way out of the box because they refuse to visualize anything but the enclosure around them.

Maybe it’s unconscious irrationality, as Albert Ellis suggested most of us possess in some regard, or maybe it’s a more intentional, embittered blame. Either way, it’s passing the buck. It’s giving up on your own life, health, and chance at happiness. How is this gratifying?

Blame admittedly allows us to languish in the presumed comfort of bad habits. It allows us to wallow in laziness, to accept inertia for the sake of ongoing bitterness. Yet, blame always betrays us in the end. Behind the resignation is painful longing, the essential, enduring instinct to live fully. Whatever excuses we tell ourselves day after day, the sense of loss – of being locked out of our own lives – is still there. It’s a grief that leaves us hollowed out and estranged from life in general...

In finally giving up the blame game, I think we make peace with the complexity and difficulty of life. We shake off the last of our excuses and let go of the martyr role. The fact is, every one of us works around day-to-day chaos and frustration. We will all face desperation and grief of some sort in our lifetime. No one here promised anything different. It’s the rest of life – the chance to live fully and gratifyingly in our bodies, in our relationships, in our vocations (whether it’s what we get paid for or not), in our explorations within this lifetime – that we get to grab hold of and find joy in – for everything it’s worth..."