On a night out at The Old Red Lion in Kennington with my friend Mike, the evening’s conversation turned to commitment. What does committing to things in your life bring to you? Why is it important?
Commitment can invoke dread. If you’re committed to something, you can feel shackled by it. “If I don’t succeed, I’ve failed.” Public commitment has the danger of leading to public shame. The fear of shame can prevent us from taking action. Thus, the very notion of commitment can undermine our ability to be committed.
Like over-eating or over-indulging, it also feels that commitment can be taken too far. We all have friends who we feel have spent vast amounts of needless energy pursuing paths that will never lead them to happiness. We want to sound a horn, to alert them to the time they’re wasting. At some point, we postulate, they’ll look back and realise that they’ve been exerting themselves for the wrong reasons and in the wrong direction. Fools!
Yet we both agreed that commitment is the only way we find joy in our lives. To be committed to something means that we’ve invested our whole being into it. It means that we’ve invested in being alive. It means we have identified a passion and given our hearts over to making it happen, regardless of the obstacles ahead.
Because there will always be obstacles. Obstacles that threaten to derail, or actually derail, the goal you’ve committed to. Setting the goal and becoming committed to trying to overcome those obstacles are the only positive actions you can take – everything else is at the whim of the universe. You may fight and win, you may fight and fail. The fighting is all that really counts.
In that way, commitment – even of the sort that eventually leads to subjective evaluations of failure – can never be negative. For example, if I commit to becoming an MP, and after many years of working hard in local politics, never realise my ambition, there is no good reason why I should look back on that time as wasted. During that time I will have honed my political beliefs, met many different people who I shared my vision with, listened to many varying points of view, thought deeply about major issues, and made certain strides towards my goal which influenced my everyday life in a positive, energised way. My commitment created my journey, and the journey had immense personal value.
Which isn’t to say that we have a ‘cop-out clause’. That it’s OK to go into something not caring if you achieve it or not. “I hope I’ll succeed, but if I don’t, I’ll walk away”. Because that is not commitment, that is cavalier. The point here is to strive towards a goal believing in all your heart that you will succeed. You know you’re committed, when the thought of your goal ignites a fire in your soul.
Yet, there may come a time when you need to reassess the goal in the face of reality. The point where it’s clear that the goal simply isn’t going to happen. That’s where social notions of failure come in hard. You didn’t achieve what you set out to, therefore you are one of life’s losers.
But the only failure here is not to reassess your goal and set a new one – one that is as close to your personal passion as you can possibly make it. If you can’t set a goal to take you forward through the next portion of your life, you’ll be stuck in a state of inertia. This is where depression and melancholy all too easily set in.
With these ideas we can reassess our notions of failure and success and, in turn, interact more positively with the universe. If we see success as a by-product of commitment, and failure from a fear of where that commitment may lead, there is no reason why every person on this planet should not enjoy wholly successful lives.
