It is very nice to wake up in the morning without any plans that need to be executed, without any commitments to fulfill and without any decisions that need to be made. Imagine your day planner is empty, and you can go wherever you
want and do whatever you want. No one is waiting for your report, and you don’t have to accomplish anything. Total freedom, isn’t that everyone’s dream?
“commit to never hurt anyone,
commit to always seeing something positive
commit to being human in every situation”
Of course, be honest: how long would you last? How long would you be able to be in this empty space before feeling that something is missing? Most of us won’t need that freedom for very long before feeling that something very deep is missing, something central and very significant. Because the truth is that in this kind of freedom there is no real joy, because the missing element does not enable feeling true happiness.
The Missing Link
So what is this thing lacking in a life of freedom? It is missing that same exact thing from which we want to escape to the freedom: commitment. We like to think that commitment is a burden and a limitation, but commitment is a need we are born into this world with, and we must respond to it if we wish to be truly happy, because commitment is the thing that truly gives our life structure and stability.
What is commitment? Commitment is an unconscious vow to avoid expression of any negative impulse. For instance, most of us are committed to the decision not to kill, and for most of us it is obvious that we wouldn’t kill anyone even if we felt the urge to do it.
And we have many commitments of this kind that we are not aware of, and they are what gives our lives our human quality, because they separate us from animals which are driven only by urges. These commitments create within us a sensation of personal identity because thanks to them we know our limits, and what we are willing and not willing to do. And these commitments are the cause for the satisfaction we feel, because satisfaction we feel only when we live up to the commitments we set for ourselves.
Commitments Add Joy
Let’s clarify a few things in order to rid of deceiving myths: the reason for the fact that there is so little joy and happiness around us is not too many commitments, but too few. And if you want to add joy and satisfaction to your life, add a few more, and stick to them.
Add commitments to your life to never hurt, to always speak pleasantly, to see something positive in everything, to avoid pointing at faults, to always be a source of light for your environment. And perhaps we can narrow the recommended commitments to one: just be human every moment and in every situation.
Just remember: it is not enough that we think we have good qualities just by nature, because our nature, as it is, is embedded with many negative urges as well. In order for there to be value to our good qualities we need to prevent the urges from expressing our bad qualities.
That is the reason why we so need these commitments. Because none of this is obvious, and because all these approaches exist within us in the form of urges waiting for the window of opportunity to express itself.