The Nature of Commitment
In a comment on my recent mail service about breaking up, someone asked if I'd write a follow-up about staying together. I've actually written about successful relationships before, based less on my own experience than on the work of relationship psychologists, so I'll just refer y'all there if you're looking for relationship advice. But thinking about what goes into a committed relationship got me thinking about the nature of commitment itself. What does it mean to exist committed to something, whether to a person, a crusade, a project, a government, a job, or an institution?
It's funny how many of the words that nosotros employ to draw devotion are also used to describe insanity. The word "fan", for instance, refers to someone who is a devoted admirer of an artist, musician, writer, or other creator (or a piece of their work), merely it comes from "fanatic", a maniacal follower of some cause or leader. The guy in line at the Stephen Male monarch signing is a fan; the guy who follows him around from signing to signing claiming King killed John Lennon is a fanatic.
Also, we use the same word, "committed", to draw someone'southward devotion to a cause or person every bit we use to describe their incarceration in a mental establishment. Is there a similarity? Well, to be committed means to pledge, bind, or oblige ane's cocky to something: a course of action, a system of behavior, or indeed a medical handling facility.
So, is being committed a sort of insanity? Well, no — but certainly there are some similarities between the kind of obsession that leads us to do horrible things to ourselves or others and the kind of obsession that leads us to greatness. We tin look at someone like Steve Jobs and run across that at work, the unmarried-minded commitment to a vision of how the world should and could work, and the refusal to acknowledge other, "bottom" ways.
OK, plenty prologue. What is commitment, then?
1. Commitment is passion.
Obsessive passion, maybe. Someone who is truly committed to something can't non do it. You tin can't live without accomplishing your crusade or being with your pregnant other. Fulfilling that commitment gives you lot great pleasure — beingness with the person you dear, pushing forward a project you believe in, creating a tiny pocket of betterness in the world, these are deeply satisfying to the person who is committed.
2. Commitment is action.
Actions speak louder than words, right? A person who is committed shows that commitment, over and over, in his or her actions. If your actions don't friction match your delivery, you but aren't committed to information technology. Yous may have a belief, a hunch, a preference, a desire, but not a commitment.
3. Commitment is obligation.
What separates the truly committed from the remainder of us is the way they encompass the crappiest parts of the chore, setting their jaw and taking on the piece of work that the residuum of usa wouldn't dream of. It'due south the parent scrubbing puke from the carpet at iv in the morn, the doting spouse helping their anile partner on and off the toilet, the executive who flies halfway around the room to repent in person for a desperately flubbed marketing campaign, the firefighter who charges into a dangerous burn because he or she hears screaming, the soldier who holds his or her ground while the residual of company flees. You practise these things not because they are fun or pleasurable in their own right, just because your delivery demands you lot do them.
4. Commitment is larger than the self.
Commitments are personal, only they're also about relationships. The committed artist sacrifices everything to express his or her inner vision to the world. The committed lover cares beginning and foremost for the emotional and concrete well-being of his or her partner. The committed performer takes the stage in the service of the audience. The committed activist creates a better globe non for him- or herself just for the generations to come. True delivery embraces and engages the world.
v. Delivery is voluntary.
Commitment is obligation, yes, simply information technology'southward freely chosen obligation. Fifty-fifty the draftee chooses to be a hero in the estrus of combat — or non to be. The environmentalist huddling shivering in a cold gunkhole in chill waters, protecting a pod of whales from a whaling ship, tin can take refuge in the fact that they chose to be there. The parent chooses to have and keep a kid, no matter how accidental the pregnancy; the spouse chooses to stay in the marriage; the worker chooses to stay on the job. It is that choice that makes it a commitment — without the choice it'south merely slavery.
(Ironically, being committed to a mental institution is not voluntary. Oh well…)
When we experience forced into something, when nosotros feel obligations hanging on us like an albatross, when our actions fail to lucifer our beliefs — these are signs that we aren't as committed every bit maybe we idea nosotros were. Maybe not committed at all. Pay attention to those signs — it's easy to convince ourselves of a commitment that isn't really a commitment at all.
So, what did I miss? And what are you committed to? Let'south talk near commitment in the comments.
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/9856.html
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