commitment !

growth comes after you commit

You know the feeling when you haven’t fully committed to something and still need to decide? You’re in this transient, liminal space. It doesn’t feel great. Why is commitment hard?

I started pondering commitment recently when a friend and I were deciding whether or not to sign up for a class. It’s every Sunday afternoon for two hours doing a deep textual analysis into the New Testament gospel of Mark. Ideally, each person who signs up does not miss a class session. The sign up clipboard came my way and I held it, my hand hovering over the paper as I wondered what to do. My friend and I looked at each other, and I shrugged to say, “I’m not sure”. I love marking up the scriptures, but did I really want two hours each Sunday already spoken for? I didn’t sign up but passed the clipboard on.

The clipboard made its rounds and came back to my friend and I. We signed our names, committing our Sunday afternoons to this class. The uncomfortable feeling before making a commitment vanished, filled with the peace and responsibility that comes with commitment. Now I know where I’ll be each Sunday afternoon from 1-3 PM. I was reminded that the best things happen when we are committed. Commitment requires something of us, it requires us to be present and to be better. That is a good thing.

We can commit to values, institutions, places, people. Marriage is a major societal (usually public) ritual to show one’s commitment. While I have not been married to my friends, I try to treat my commitment to them as a marriage. This is the same with my family. I have notes in my head or on my calendar telling me when I need to reach out to long lost high school best friends for a life update, or I’ll save money to visit a friend in another state. I want to ensure in their mind that my place in their life is constant. Some years are better than others, but in the grand scheme of a life I think it will be okay.

The best things happen when we are committed. The choice to commit to someone or something is a gift, and it is no small thing. Last week was the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and I was able to see a few films. One of which was Daughters, directed by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton. Daughters follows a program that allows young girls to visit their incarcerated fathers for a father-daughter dance. Netflix bought the film, so look out for it later this year! You will probably sob-cry. It is beautiful and heartbreaking and you will be mad at the prison system. In order for these fathers to attend the dance and see their daughters, they must participate in ten weeks of counseling with a fatherhood coach. They open up about their lives as currently not physically present fathers, their own childhoods, and what it could mean to be a good dad. At one point, Angela Patton visits them and tells the men about their girls. “They want to count on you…You are their fathers for life”.

Commitment holds a gravity, it’s heavy. It is a paper weight gently laid down on a windy day.

Before I set off on an LDS proselytizing mission to Hidalgo, Mexico for a year and a half in 2017, I printed David Brooks’ New York Times Opinion article “The Moral Bucket List”. As I lived out of my suitcase for over a year, I read this article a few hundred times. I loved Brooks’ descriptions of résumé virtues and eulogy virtues. Résumé virtues are what you bring to the workforce, while eulogy virtues are what they’ll say at your funeral, what builds up a good character. Commitment leads to more eulogy virtues. Brooks writes,

People on this road [to character] see life as a process of commitment making. Character is defined by how deeply rooted you are. Have you developed deep connections that hold you up in times of challenge and push you toward the good? In the realm of the intellect, a person of character has achieved a settled philosophy about fundamental things. In the realm of emotion, she is embedded in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, she is committed to tasks that can’t be completed in a single lifetime.

Life is a process of commitment making!! Commitments root you deeper into love. They push and challenge you, and you can become better. Commitments lead to growth. Commitment offers a depth that can only be reached through a give and take, through a fixed appointment on a calendar, through an understanding that in this relationship, we try to fix our issues because we have decided we are committed.

Commitments can be broken and there are commitments of varying degrees. Maybe a certain commitment wasn’t right in the end. But it’s always worth a try. This is why we date people before linking our bank accounts. When it doesn’t work out, at least you are the kind of person who jumps in, giving things your all.

Commitment is the only thing that allows others to count on us, and for us to count on others. When you so confidently can lay your head on someone’s shoulder, or tell someone you were crying last night, that is on commitment.

I am so grateful for those who are committed to me. They allow me to relax my shoulders. They allow me to ask for help. They bring out the biggest laughs in me. I am equally grateful for those I can commit to. Through my commitment, I think I am becoming a better person. I feel myself growing. I like holding this responsibility. I am learning new things.

xoxoxo