Commit

and our inability to

The Problem:

“Every choice is a renunciation.”

- Thomas Aquinas

I see in myself and my peers an ambivalence about commitment; we want it all: the options, freedom to do anything we want when we want, yet at the same time want things that require commitment or a renunciation of our immediate desires.

[side note: the word ambivalence does not mean simple uncertainty. It is “a simultaneous desire to say or do two opposite or conflicting things.” Think of the rope attached to two cars slowly accelerating in opposite directions. It marks a point of immobility in tension.]

Because of that internal tension, our lives often rewrite Robert Frost’s poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

I went halfway down one, changed my mind,

Ran back and took the other.

Commit: (verb) 1. carry out or perpetrate, 2. pledge or bind 3. dedicated to (something) 4. entrust or consign 5. transfer to (place)

With all the connotations, I’ll give background on what angle I want to approach the word before going deeper.

1) When I lived in Jinja, about once a month the muzungu (missionary) men would get together at a bar and play poker. Ugandan Shillings made the perfect poker chips, so bring the change you acquired since the last game and get a Nile Brewery beer. My second time playing with them I was still unsure of how I fit in their crowd. In that sense the stakes were higher than the ten dollars the pot might get up to. I had been playing cautiously all night and towards the end I got a straight flush. After bidding low to get some others to buy into the hand, we were down to the final call. I went all in; when you have what you want, why hold back.
2) In Dolly Sod’s Wilderness, WV, the trails are rarely traveled and unmarked so you go for miles unsure if you missed a fork. One trail hugs Red Creek — swollen with snowmelt — and crosses it a few times. The trail may abruptly end, and if you’re lucky, you’ll see a cairn across the river indicating where the trail picks up. So there you are with dry feet trying to mentally jump your way across the boulders that jut above the water’s surface. You can easily spend an hour checking upstream and down for a better crossing. But when water levels are high, you will find yourself back where you started with no other options. With the first step your leg goes in deeper than you wanted and brings the realization snow melt doesn’t warm up much. But it’s that second step, the one that takes you up to your waist, that I’m talking about.
3) In High School wrestling practices, I remember my coaches going over a move — say, a double leg — and shouting we had to “COMMIT, damn it!” I think I understand what they meant better now than then: If you go into a move halfway, or doubting, then you won’t have the force or surprise to pull it off. You get crossfaced, sprawled on and then you’re fighting from the bottom.
4) Sometimes mountain climbing off-trail you can’t see what is ahead until you’re upon it. Twice I’ve gone up steep couliors and suddenly found a small cliff barring progress. When they are only 5-10 feet it seems to make sense to give bouldering a try instead of losing altitude and time by retracing your steps down. If you’re using sticks to help propel yourself up, you are faced with a choice of what to do with them — leave them behind and climb up, or throw them on top of the ledge and know if you don’t make it, you’ll be hiking the rest of the trip without them.

5) Jesus had his own take about commitment: “God’s kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field for years and then accidentally found by a trespasser. The finder is ecstatic—what a find!—and proceeds to sell everything he owns to raise money and buy that field. Or, God’s kingdom is like a jewel merchant looking for excellent pearls. Finding one that is flawless, he immediately sells everything and buys it. (Matt 13.44-45, The Message)

What are the things we truly commit to in life — in the sense of the above anecdotes?

Marriage. Put that ring on her finger and say, “You and no other, for the rest of my life, no matter what.” We stammer that sacred oath, only to discover what we actually swore ourselves to in the years to come. At the altar we don’t see the next fifty years of two people trying to live, together. [Side note: interesting that the chemicals (dopamine and adrenaline) that are so prevalent in dating-engagement and that help usher us into a huge commitment like marriage are by nature only temporary and present with something new and exciting. What happens when these neurotransmitters lessen? We wonder what happened…is it her? Me? American divorce rates seem evidence of the usual conclusion.] In retrospect, the best marriage advice I received was spoken from the perspective of commitment: “There will come a time when the grass seems greener on the other side. It’s not. The grass is greener where you water it.” Sounds like real commitment.

Children. Traditional thinking is that to have a child is to commit to raise it. Abortion or adoption would indicate otherwise. But as much as it is something planned and prepared for, it is commitment. Perhaps more so than marriage. Two twenty-somethings can still quit their jobs and travel the world together, floating on the winds of their attention-span. Children though; now there is a truly anchoring obligation. Because to provide well is to ensure a nurturing, consistent environment. Scares the hell out of me.

Career. To choose one is to forgo others. I cannot be both a mental health counselor and a program manager at an international NGO. Maybe you would argue otherwise. Likewise, our culture seems to be one of “you can have it all.” You don’t have to choose. “Have it your way” [Thank you Burger King]. Do both. The modern attempt is a patchwork of lives, snips of careers, embroidered with freelancing, side jobs and hobbies.

These commitments expose a phobia that is the real internal struggle. The proliferation of options creates a perpetual fear of missing out. Put economically: option vs. opportunity cost. What options are we missing out on by choosing one? Underlying the anxiety of commitment is ambivalence of choice. Yet paradoxically, in our era of endless options, we must choose. About 231 times a day. Some examples:

1) You go to the grocery store because you’re out of cereal.

You want something that is healthy and tastes good. On your way to the cereal aisle [doesn’t that term say it all: “aisle”?], you pass an endcap with a sale, and stand there taking in more information than could be useful, weighing “High Protein,” vs. “Low Cost,” vs “New,” vs “Low fat.” Or do you want instant oatmeal? Or maybe you should try making eggs for breakfast.

2) You are due for a phone upgrade from Verizon. (Really they want you to sign up for another two year contract.) You go in the store and start looking. Iphones on the left, Droids on the right, the old flip phones in the back. Choice becomes far more complex than simple pros and cons when it is a signifier of identity.

3) Hundreds of years ago you looked for a spouse in your town, a nearby city, the radar limited by your two legs and word of mouth. Today? Speed dating, online matchups, social media, or travel to another continent and try your luck. Your options went from maybe 50 to 50 million. How is a man to choose? (And not look over his shoulder?)

In a world where options are endless, how do we choose those things which we commit to? Does it mean you flip a coin, make a choice, and plow forward, regardless of any indications to the contrary? Or do you always keep one eye open, weighing, measuring if it is “working?” Watch out or else you’ll end up a doubter who goes back and forth yearly/monthly/daily/hourly. That doesn’t make for the kind of determination that holds fast through the storms of life and is able to finally see the sun break through the clouds.

Fear to commit is obvious in trying on 12 pairs of hiking boots before picking one, buying it and taking it back the next day. I’ve done that. I justify it by the argument of “At that cost, I need to get it right.” But the fact is, there are 12 options. At least. Better yet, stores provide for the commitmentphobe by saying “moneyback guaranteed.” I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit trail of analyzing our culture; it is enough to say our prolific number of choices doesn’t make life easier. Convenient, and highly customized, yes, but not simpler.

So blame modernization, grow our beards and only shop at Goodwill? No. The point is not to artificially limit our options and go Amish, a modern day version of the stylite monks who lived on pillars to isolate themselves from the fallen world. I think the point is more to live with intentionality and recognition of our finitude. We cannot be everything, so we do our best to become something.

I heard a story recently that I think illustrates this well: A newly married husband and wife went to a party together. They both got drunk and at the end of the night the wife went home with another man. The next morning she went home fearing the fallout, and to her surprise, found her husband looking out a window. She sat down across the room from him in silence. After a few minutes, he calmly said, “I’m leaving for a couple days. I want to give you time to think about something: Are you a married woman, or are you something else?” When it comes down to it, choices to the exclusion of other options are exactly what make us who we are.

Thomas Aquinas’ quote on renunciation might be the most profound statement ever made in this context of choice. In an era of the customized life, it is heresy, but still true.

In our life of specialization, in order to accomplish anything of depth, we must commit. Stay in a field long enough and to be competitive, you have to get a Masters degree. Getting older alone pushes us to set our flag in concrete and state emphatically, “Here I stand.” Yet we don’t know where to dig the hole.

Some of us are rarely/never content with where/who we are. We explore the shores of our world, plumb the depths of the water, and when we have, we want something new. We default into becoming The Men Who Don’t Fit In as Robert Service describes in his poem:

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they’re always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

They say: “Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!”

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake.

The Point:

Maybe the problem runs deeper than restlessness. As Catholic priest Ron Rolheiser said, “We are over-charged for our own lives. We have divine fire inside us, want everything, yearn for the whole world, and yet, at a point, have to commit to one particular person, at one particular place, and in one very particular life, with all the limits that imposes. Infinite desire limited by a finite choice, such is the nature of real life and love.” It seems commitment — in this context, limiting ourselves — has much to do with maturity: “to devote,” “to dedicate oneself to,” and “to sacrifice oneself for.” In a psychological context, maturity is the ability to deal constructively with reality. That seems to fit well here.

For some, avoiding commitment — that ball and chain — is a matter of self-preservation. Which can be profoundly true if that self is dependent on moving across life like a basilisk lizard across water. No dead weight, no anchors. But what if those anchors are exactly the point? “It is my conviction that man should not, indeed cannot, struggle for identity in a direct way; he rather finds identity to the extent to which he commits himself to something beyond himself, to a cause greater than himself…It makes no sense to confront man with values which are seen merely as a form of self-expression…The meaning which a being has to fulfill is something beyond himself, it is never just himself.” (Psychotherapy and Existentialism, Frankl, p. 9-11). Brennan Manning summed this idea well, “Paradoxically, we attain self-awareness, not by self-analysis, but by the leap of commitment.” Is the key to our lives really found in those things which we have dedicated ourselves to?

As Quaker teacher Douglas Steere commented, the ancient human question “Who am I?” is inevitably only answered by the question, “Whose am I?” According to this Quaker leader and philosophy professor of 36 years, “there is no selfhood outside of relationship.”

Then do we not just find commitments and jump in? Join the Marines, marry that girl, get your doctorate and burn some bridges, right? No. I think its more like the anecdotes at the beginning; when you’ve gone up and down the river bank, at some point you step in. In poker, when you’ve got the best hand you’ve seen all night, go for it.

Want to confuse someone? Ask them what they want. Oddly enough, that is what experts teach is the best thing to do if you’re being mugged or assaulted. It can stop a thief in his tracks if he tries to verbalize what he is doing. Likewise, it can freeze anyone like a deer in the high beams. If you don’t have conviction about what you do, you will be blown all over the map by circumstance, emotions and other people’s opinions. Maybe commitment is more about living with conviction than anything.

If you choose a certain life, you exclude other lives you might have had. But paradoxically, failing to commit diminishes us even more.

As Robert Service ends his poem:

In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.