It is quite unique these days to see a commitment never end until one's last turn in the road or one's last breath. Some of us still promise to achieve this in most of the major commitments we make - commitment to career, a vow in marriage and bonds with family. A pledge to preserve our decisions is regarded as an unshakable promise, or so it was in days more traditional than these. But as the tradition of the straight and narrow approach has been forsaken for the more modern adaptation, there are further qualifications to this principal rarely discussed. These should be clearly exposed once and for all in support of all those who are slow to respond. In daring to write the truth about emotional evolution, I hope to release the poor innocent souls still fighting a generous battle against inevitable victimization and the weight of guilt, as we continue to give all we have left to barking up hollow trees. People who cannot hear or feel the memories of vintage commitment are not worthy of these efforts any longer, and someone should come to the aid of hopeless promise-keepers once and for all.
If we look at life as an opportunity to excel our very best promised efforts in spurts of about 15 years give or take some, we are better off. The ancient Greeks saw the hope in such aspirations. A child looks for independence from the development phase of his or her life at about 15. A serious marriage begins to take on different characteristics of role playing and pretending that we are with different partners in about the same period of time. For some this occurs sooner. Careers evolve with such briskness and haste that even if we continue to love what we do, time and man will confidently modify or transform the very role from where we began. Consider the typesetter of old. He is now either a computer operator or unemployed, both titles well recognized today, and both categories fostered with the sense of awkward adjustment for the typesetter who needed to conform.
But certainly none will be more cutting than the desertion of one's bond to or by the family. I think it was the last great commitments to go, but decidedly stands confirmed today. For those of us who have experienced this, its reality shines somewhere up there between a sense of being orphaned and having drowned in a bathtub of Clorox. Purists or conservatives will guilt their way through misery over this state of being until they cease to exist. What could be more painful than being cut off by family. However, if you can adapt to a more evolutionary modus operandi and get your arms around the dependability of change, you too can look forward to new and exciting developments with regularity. Truth be told, it requires only how many multiples of 15 years you think you have left, or at least are planning on. Furthermore, with each progression in the definition of commitment, those who feel they were left behind or badly abused in the last round will be able to find their like kind (other people with the same problem) and a self-established comfort in sharing as mankind has become more verbal than ever before with blogs and websites to vent by.
The ultimate hope, of course, in all this theorizing is that in making peace with the concept of dependable change we can begin to rely on finding a comfortable way to go on so that guilt dissipates, ineptness to the times is alleviated and faith in one's path carries on. Why be weary with commitment built to withstand any pitfall, when you can run with the pack who never knows what lies around the corner. As the emphasis now centers on comfort rather than the guarantee of a pledge, one learns to relax and focus on self-preservation, which of course is what traditional values were originally invented to protect. All that is required for this adaptation is an agreeable frame of mind and the lack of judgmental passion. If you can believe in all this you might want to try it.
Alice Elizabeth Cagle, September 24, 2010
