Commitment Gives Life To Our Dreams
I was watching a movie the other night and something was said that annoyed me. A woman was complaining to a friend about her husband and how their marriage had become stale. To which her friend said, ‘Ohmigod girl, if it doesn’t feel right then you’ve got to get out.’
I turned the movie off and sat wondering why it annoyed me so much. Which got me thinking about relationships and how fragile they are, and how the pairing of two people will inevitably create tensions and unpleasant feelings sometimes. And the only thing that gets us through, and creates a deep, living relationship is commitment.
And that same kind of commitment is also necessary when it comes to meditation practice – or gym -work, or yoga or any skill for that matter.
Which means, we should not make our choices lightly.
But what I want to talk about here is not just commitment – but rather the almost magical energy it inserts into a life, and the power it has to make dreams come alive.
In the ‘80’s I had a friend who was totally immersed in the New Age. We’d meet regularly for coffee, and she would rave about this or that wellness seminar she was doing, or she’d try to get me to an introductory lesson by a new teacher. But what I noticed over the two years I knew her was her choices never seemed connected to any sense of commitment. She was like a butterfly in the wind, flitting from teacher to teacher, seminar to seminar. And I’d ask her what happened to the thing she’d been doing the last time I saw her, and she’d go quiet, then say, ‘oh, I don’t know, it just didn’t feel right …’ And what I noticed was, for all the many ‘health and wellness’ seminars she flitted through, for the two years I knew her, she remained as neurotic and sick as when we first met.
She made so many choices – as many as one new choice each week – posing each new choice as a step forward when in fact, for the lack of commitment, each new choice was simply her running on the spot.
Making a choice is easy.
But without commitment following it, the choice has no power, and nothing will come of it.
Consider the story of J.K. Rowling, who escaped from an abusive husband to face financial challenges as a single mother living on government benefits, while at the same time fighting depression and the early loss of her mother from multiple sclerosis. She chose to become a writer. To that end, she began writing her first Harry Potter book in June 1990, and with everything else going on in her life, it wasn’t finished until January 2007 – 16 years and 7 months later. Then, as if that didn’t test her enough, she spent more years waiting as a succession of publishers rejected what she’d done. It was only when an agent took a chance on her and published five hundred copies of her book, that her dream finally came true.
I’m sure, throughout those many years, that there had to have been times when she doubted herself – her ability, the time it was taking, and so on. But she kept going. Her commitment to her books eventually created the success she enjoyed, and enabled her to transcend the dreadful life she had been stuck in.
The biggest obstacles to any chosen direction are the feelings that arise as we begin carrying out what we’ve decided. But here’s the thing – feelings are cheap and insubstantial. They come and go like the weather. Everything we do each day creates feelings in our mind and body – pleasant sometimes and unpleasant other times. And each feeling brings its own temporary and very deceptive reality. For example, our lover kisses us and compliments how we look, and we feel a blush of pleasure – and suddenly the world looks rosy and we feel positive and happy. Then, later in the day a driver cuts us off on the road and we feel a surge of anger, and the world is suddenly full of horrible people. Then we arrive at work and there’s nowhere to park and we’re late so we feel anxious – and the world seems a place of frustration and fear. Then our boss tells us we’re doing a great job and we flush with pride, and right then we’re masters of the universe … you get the idea.
So trying to enact any choice without the commitment to pushing through how you feel about it at any one time, is pointless. As compelling as our feelings seem at any one time – particularly the negative ones – they have no place when it comes to what we’ve chosen to do. And most important, they have no place in forming and keeping to chosen life directions.
Commitment is the foundation and architecture of a life.
Like water on a plant, commitment brings our choices to life. To dedicate to something we’ve chosen – a cause, a goal, a relationship, or a principle – is to make a dream become real.
And the interesting thing is, that commitment feeds itself. When we hold to our commitment no matter the ebb and flow of how we feel, it gathers power and energises our dreams. In this, the maxim, ‘what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger’ is very apt – because every challenge and obstacle we push through creates the strength we need to push through all the other challenges and obstacles that lie ahead.
In this way, commitment builds not only our future, but also the kind of human being we are. It develops qualities of discipline, resilience, and self-reliance, and in relationships, it breeds respect and trust.
And of course, this being a meditation blog, it goes without saying that commitment is the motor our meditation practice relies upon to keep moving forward. To trust that no matter the ebb and flow of how we feel, we will keep practicing helps us relax into the routine of the practice – and jet-fuels our progress.
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Roger’s book, ‘BEING STILL – MEDITATION THAT MAKES SENSE’ is available now. Just click on the links below:
AUDIOBOOK (including ebook & MP3 exercises) – AUD $25.00
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