Frankly Put: Where Commitment Lives
“A man is only as good as his word,” is a philosophy I live by almost religiously because I believe to give your word is to give commitment. To show commitment is to make a promise to make good on the action presented.
When the issue of commitment is brought up, the first thought is of a romantic relationship but one quick look in the dictionary will shift that perspective ever so slightly. Essentially, at its base level, it’s defined as a pledge to be met in the future. Which when put into context can be romantic in the way it can be accompanied by vows — a pledge to honour and to love.
I find that I am one who doesn’t see the need for unnecessary promises because I value commitment. Lately, I’ve been meditating on the way sometimes, the word we give others or even ourselves is so flimsy and to be honest can be taken as an act of disrespect to the recipient party. This is a realization that once a promise leaves your lips you are bound to that word until you satisfy it.
What drives someone to make baseless promises? Or rather what situation takes back the validity of a promise? It could be something as simple as a call at a specific time that never comes to happen with no reason or explanation as to why, with action to reschedule. It could be as big as a career choice made and the promise to put in the work to succeed. Sometimes, life happens and in no way does that take away from the good intention behind it.
I’ve also found myself in this space of acceptance of what will be, will be and if it is meant to be, it will be. I often find that it comes with this slight stumble of not putting in the work and expecting that what is yours will come to you. Truth is, you can have a garden but you cannot expect the flowers to grow there simply because you define what you have as a garden. That is not where commitment lives.
Where does commitment live though? I think it lives in choice. Much like love, its flesh or main point lies in the verb or in the action that follows. Yes, it is the acceptance of a pledge to a happening of the future but it is also the digging your claws into the present. What you do now influences what happens when the future comes. How you tend to the soil of your garden will influence just how much your flowers bloom, if only to come full circle on the analogy.
Something I am calling myself out on is the truth that the work it takes to make the commitment is not the same as the one to keep the commitment. I’m very guilty of applying pressure to make the commitment and honour it as a promise in all my ego as a man but somehow when it comes to maintenance, it seems like I have nothing new to bring to the table where something new is needed. Thinking that the work I put in to get there is enough to keep me there has been one of my greatest flaws in judgement.
Presently, I am finding myself challenged to bring out the energy needed to maintain or keep these commitments. It’s always easier said than done. This gradual chipping away of the surface of faux expertise has revealed to me this underbelly of inexperience, that is proving hard to look at when I look in the mirror. All the hard work I put into shaping the strength of a promise needs to now be put into keeping that promise. There are places where the wheel no longer rolls by gravity after the first push.
If commitment lives in the choice, choosing is giving life back to those promises. What does choosing look like? It looks like getting up every day to put in some work towards it. It is not living in expectation that just because I am doing so, I will get the desired result but still show up every day in new ways.
It is finding and refining, definitions of how things occur in life. Like, just because this one way of doing things is what has worked for me for most of my life does not mean this way of going about it will yield the same results for me in this current chapter of life as it did in the previous chapter and accepting that demand of the universe to keep pushing forward and meet myself where I need to be.
Sometimes that choice is in the acceptance that the things that once worked no longer hold the same power. It is the choice to approach life with a newfound curiosity to find out what more can be done. It isn’t depending on creativity but on the innovation of new perspectives the world calls for. That shift in perspective is not a dishonour of the way things are but just a new appreciation.
For someone my age, it isn’t far from common to be told, “You are still young, there is still time to reinvent yourself. Do not be so rigid in the way you approach life. There is so much time to fail and try again.” What do you do when it feels like letting go of that rigidity is like erasing all the choices you made to build yourself into the person you are? I think in some ways, that grounding element in what you know makes you rigid and thus a little tougher where you are needed to be soft.
This pressure to be someone who is always so open can be detrimental to the muscle of commitment that is required of us. I think of a career, where I come from a generation that moves in and out of jobs (if you are lucky to get one) with such great turnover it seems like the trend. Every so often I am seeing my agemates being celebrated in their offices for leaving more than for promotions. Which to be honest can be because of a myriad of things I don’t even want to get into right now but I will host this perspective to serve the point I am making.
For most, this mentality leaks into relationships. It is harder to feel happy in relationships these days because the general drive to chase the spark has made it difficult to commit. This “What if…?” makes whatever is out there seem more beautiful and FOMO-provoking. I’m afraid it is a bias too far spread in a world of many choices.
If commitment lives in choice, so help me God let me not suffer from choice paralysis because I want to fulfil my pleadge… to put it Frankly.
