Personal responsibility saved my life. I was scuba diving forty miles off the Delaware coast on the wreck of the Washingtonian, a 400-foot refrigerator ship that sunk in the early 1900s. We were in 95 feet of water and visibility was poor, about fifteen feet. I was trailing my dive buddy, an experienced diver, by just a few feet as we searched the scattered wreckage for bugs (lobsters). Even with the limited visibility, I was within sight of him when my regulator suddenly became caught in fishing line tangled on the wreck.

Before I knew what had happened, my buddy was out of sight. The more I struggled to free myself, the more the line coiled around my arms, legs and equipment. The dragons of fear and anger grabbed and held me tightly. Seeing my air gage at 1500 pounds, my first thought was: "I have twenty minutes to live."

I felt sorry for myself as I thought about my wife and daughters. I was angry at the fisherman who carelessly lost their tackle. They were to blame for my situation. I was furious at my buddy for leaving me. I tamed those dragons by telling myself: "Blame won't save you. Do what you're trained to do, and do it now!”

I took off my diving gear and laid it on the wreck, keeping the mouthpiece just like I was taught in my certification course. Using the knife strapped to my left ankle, I cut the fishing lines one at a time. When my gear was free, I carried it away from the wreck to open sand and put it back on. When I finished, the air gage read 400 pounds (about five minutes of air). Just then my buddy, who had been looking frantically, found me. Safely back on the boat after the dive, we laughed as we described the exciting adventure to the other divers who were unaware of my near-death experience.

Personal responsibility saved my life that day. I almost wasted my air and my life blaming the entanglement on someone else. How often in our daily activities do we figuratively die wasting our air on self-pity, blame or guilt when personal responsibility would save the day and fix the problem?

Blame doesn’t solve problems. They can only be solved by taking responsibility for how things are, and taking action to make things like we want them to be.