Commitment can have a lot of different feelings surrounding it. We commit to a life with another person for better and for worse in marriage. We commit to a life of obedience, poverty and chastity entering a life of spiritual enclosure. We are committed to prison if we have transgressed the law and have been caught doing it.
The issue of freedom is at the heart of commitment. Could we say that we are freed by it if we are following our hearts? We are imprisoned by it until we surrender and accept its costs. All true adventures have two components – a sense of having to do what we feel we must do from some deep level in our psyches, but also a wanting to do it as well. Accepting both sides of the paradox makes us free and allows us to become more than we were.
Phrases posted on Facebook, January 2016
I like to think that deep inside us is a field of truth that contains our essence. It waits for us to spend time with it and to bring forth the potential hidden there. Perhaps any commitment that is lasting and worthwhile has to do with that.
None of us want to die with an unlived life. Wouldn’t a first commitment be to pay attention and to notice what makes us feel fully alive? I call it keeping a joy book . . . nothing fancy, just a quick jotting such as Cardinal at the feeder. The red made my heart leap or The grin on my student’s face getting it for the first time was something. Wow! Kept regularly these jottings accumulate, and in time the pattern of what makes us feel really alive becomes visible.
Building on the commitment to notice what makes us feel wonderfully alive (i.e. the joy book or some such practice) comes the unfolding commitment to feel the tug. We can note all we want to about what matters, but without feeling it deeply we have no juice to act. When noticing and feeling are brought together we feel the tug and are more able to act on behalf of what matters.
I can’t quite let go of the importance of feeling in making a commitment. I am not talking about like or dislike but about what the potter, Bernard Leach called “the truth of being”. When we get the feel of something we are in some way in touch with the truth of its being. It matters that we bring forth the matter of our being. That is a commitment of worth. It is holy and tender work, and it is how spirit works with each of us.
When we make a commitment, a feeling alignment with the truth of being of that which calls us, we are daring to move beyond what is expected of us as well as what defines us in external ways. Even our small daily activities will then be imbued with a measure of carefulness and reverence.
Sometimes commitment takes the form of waiting. For many reasons we might have to do nothing and trust until a direction or an outcome becomes knowable. Waiting can be very stultifying (what a great English word!). Under those circumstances I take a refuge in John Milton’s words, “Those also serve who stand and wait.”
When we make a commitment and find we have not kept it as faithfully as we initially hoped we could, we can be tempted to let the whole thing go. It’s the I didn’t do it perfectly syndrome, a justification cop out. Better to resume with a little more kind, yet tough, love in our hearts towards our human fallibility.
We usually envision some end result or goal when we make a commitment. It helps us make it and perhaps even to keep it. But the deep, abiding work is to make a commitment for its own sake and let go of the outcome.
Many people just live along without a central commitment. It’s like being wax for a candle but without a wick. A conscious commitment allows a flame – light and warmth – to be lit not just for us but also for others.
Sometimes a serious commitment will feel like a heavy burden. We carry it because we have an inner sense that we must do so, but it also carries us in a mysterious way. It shapes and transforms us. Do you also wonder if we become more of who we really are in the process?
A conscious commitment centers us like a keel does a boat. Our commitment may take us to unfamiliar and scary places, but with that keel or centerboard we can navigate uncertainty much better.
Not only can we navigate uncertainty better with a deep commitment as our guide, but we will also be asked to be open and tolerate vulnerability more and more. Isn’t it true then that we are not only on a journey, but we also are the journey?
When we make a commitment it means we intend to live in response to something on a continuing basis. I like to think of it as a response ability. But to do so some things have to be surrendered, don’t they? Then doesn’t faithfulness turn out to be a both/and process – a keep to it and a let go of whatever is extraneous?
Commitment – the very word can fill us with both and excitement and dread. Without commitment there is no fulfillment of significance. With it, we are in for what it costs and that may be significant. Oh the yes and the no of commitment brought to a bearing weight in the heart will change us forever!
After a while when we have stayed with something that we have committed ourselves to, it begins to lead the way. We learn to follow intuitively where we are led, and somehow it becomes more than enough to attend this way.
