I make an appointment with someone, with you, perhaps, for sometime in any of your tomorrows, and all the future tomorrows that follow your yesterdays. I reach out into a future that neither of us can see, and I plan a meeting with you, and ask you to trust me to be there with you. I stretch myself into unpredictable days ahead and make one thing predictable for you: I will be there for you. I create a small island of certainty for you in the swirling waters of our uncertainties: it is the certainty of my presence with you. I make space in my life for you that you know will be there waiting for you, even I every other place is crowded. These are some of the things I do when I make a commitment to another human being.
How strange it is, when you think about it, that a mere human being can take hold of the future and fasten one part of it down for another person. That ordinary people can lift their lives a good notch above their whims and their impulses and their desires, and secure their lives together in the face of all fretful fates that lie in waiting. How wonderful it is that we can offer each other one mooring as we face our free-floating futures- the mooring of trust in each other's commitments.
We have a mystery on our hands, no doubt about it: it is the mystery of how we, weak and limited persons that we are, can look all the uncertainty of life full in the face and say, I will make one thing certain: my presence in the life of another person. The mystery gets deeper when we consider that there are always two essential ingredients to a personal commitment. Two components. And we need both of them equally. A personal commitment is a blend of consistency and care. Let's take consistency first.
According to anonymous:
The Los Angeles Times has a nifty slogan: "We are there for you every day." And they are. They have been there for me at my address every morning for more than fifteen years. It is nice to know that come flood, hail, or desert sun, I can count on waking up to the plop of the Los Angeles Times. On my driveway. I don't know whether he cares a fig about me, or about any of the people at whose homes he delivers the paper every morning. And I don't mind. All I really want from him is consistency -the paper, same time, every day.
But this is not commitment: his consistency is only a matter of contract, of giving me that for which I pay. When it comes to a commitment between two persons, we need care as well as consistency. When I care about you, I deliver myself to you. Which is a lot different from delivering a newspaper every morning. Consistency has to do with predictability. Caring has to do with personal presence. The people who deliver the Los Angeles Times are predictable, that is, they deliver the paper to me consistently. My wife brings her very self to me in caring love, she is present as well as predictable.
This isn't enough to be predictable. Not in personal commitments. But it isn't enough to be present either. I have an acquaintance who is powerfully present with me when he is there. He looks me in the eye when he talks to me, he pays attention to everything I say, makes me feel as if I am the only thing of importance in hi life at the moment. He makes me believe that he cares. And when he leaves he promise to call me, and he says. "We'll have lunch." But he doesn't, and he doesn't return my calls. We don't have lunch. I don't see him again until we happen to meet at a party. And feel let down. I need consistency as well as care. Presence without predictability, care without consistency: it's not enough. Any more than consistency without care is enough. Commitment is both. But all this only raises the stakes and increases the risk. We promise so much of ourselves when we know so little about what things are going to be like when the time comes to keep the commitments we make. Consider the risk.
We will Change
I won't be quite the same person tomorrow that I am today. I will change. My needs will change. My desires will change. So will my feelings.
When I promise to be with you, I do not know for sure what I will be like at some distant time when you will need me. Yet I expect that the person I will become will keep commitment that I make today. You will change as much as I will. I do not know what you will be like in some distant tomorrow. Will you be attractive? Healthy? Will you change your mind about the important things we both believe in now? Will you feel differently about me? Will you want me to be near you? How can I know for sure? Yet I expect to keep my commitment to you, whoever you turn out to be in the future.
Circumstances will change too. Neither of us knows what life will be like when the time comes for us to keep the commitment we make today. Will times be hard? Will other people have come into your life to crowd me out? Will life be too difficult for us to manage together? How can we know?
And yet I expect to keep my commitment to you in the future, however tough times. A commitment has a "no matter what" quality about it. No matter how I change. No matter what happens to you. No matter what happens around us. It has the feel of UNCONDITIONALITY.
What a risk! And how high the stakes?
The stakes are high for us because we surrender so much when we make serious commitments to people. We stand to gain a lot too: maybe love, maybe life. But let's not discount the surrender.
There are at least three things we surrender when we commit ourselves to another person.
We surrender our FREEDOM
We surrender our INDIVIDUALITY
We surrender our CONTROL
All in all, a lot of surrender. Before we go on, we had better take a good look at each of them just to make sure we know beforehand how much we surrender.
We surrender our FREEDOM
When we make a commitment, we freely decide that our lives will not flow free, unattached, from one personal relationship to another. We set our minds-in-advance- to say no to some offers that comes our way. Our commitment builds an invisible fence around us, and we freely choose to respect the limits.
We surrender our INDIVIDUALITY
When we commit yourself to someone else, we stretch beyond our individual self and put ourself at the side of another. I put myself beside you, to walk with you into the heather of the hidden hills before us. Once committed, I am no longer a separate one. The mirror of myself no longer shows a solitary being, standing alone, by himself, an isolated individual. I am plural, one of us, my unity is we. Who am I? I am who I am in linkage with you, you are part of my definition.
We surrender our CONTROL
When we commit yourself to another, we give up control over a segment of our own life. For we let another person stake a claim on ourself. The person to whom we make a commitment can call us back to himself or herself with two simple words: You promised. And we give up our right to say; I don't care. So somebody else shares control with me, control over my own life. All in all, its a lot to surrender, and done in the sure knowledge that we are going to change. Yet we make our commitment. High risk. With a lot at stake. This brings me to the most critical point of all. The only way to live with the high risk of commitment is TRUST.
When I commit myself to you, I expect you to trust me. You know that I am capable of leaving you. You know that I can let you down. So I make my commitment and expect you to trust me to keep it.
But then I need to trust you too. I have to trust you not to abuse my commitment, not to scorn it, not to deflate it. I trust that you will not turn me away when I want to be present with you. I trust you to treat my commitment kindly.
Trust is our only guarantee. But this is not guarantee at all, not in the sense of a sure thing backed by a contract that can hold up in court. We can draw up a contract between us, and my contract may limit your losses if I should leave you, or mine if you should leave me. But no contract can tell us for sure that I will stay with you, or you with me, when staying costs us something.
Our trust is not blind, our inner eys, our heart, has its own way of seeing. We trust because our inner eye sees each other's sincerity and character. What we see reduces the risk. But it offers us the peculiar kind of hope that dares to take high risk of personal commitment. Without trust, nobody in his right mind would ever make a serious commitment to another person. With trust, a person dares to gamble on a lasting partnership of caring love.
Any thought?
Let's have a coffee
Hari
Enjoy reading...Blessing