Many people make commitments nowadays without following them. Gone are the days where someone can be killed for something they say. No, I don't believe it would be wise at all to petition for those days to return, more so to educate a younger generation about the importance of following through.
There are times when I guarantee things to patients in the hospital and the clinic. I've learned after a year of medicine to offer all guarantees as a statistic. I've learned to say "99% of the people we treat with this recover fully" or "I can say within 95% confidence that you're going to walk out of this hospital before the week is over". Saying "I am sure" or "I promise", these are expensive words that I've been taught not to use.
The same is not true, however, when we make commitments to others. I organize dinners for residency applicants this year, and I've had more than one person say, at a recruitment meeting, "People will sign up" "People will go" "You should have no trouble finding people to go". Someone suggested, a while ago, that there be a calendar for dinner, one on which people can sign up and commit to going to dinner, meeting applicants the night before their interview, and telling them all about the program. My resident colleagues said, during the meetings, "People will go", but they didn't specify who would go, and when they themselves would go. Filling up the first month took a lot of texting and emailing, but I managed to fill up an entire month in advance with people committed to dinner. Nobody has broken their commitments yet, possibly because there's an online accessible dinner calendar that everyone can view, possibly because there's an incentive, and possibly because this whole recruiting thing matters to them. It was, however, quite difficult to get people to commit to something more than a week in advance.
There have been many times in my life when my parents, my relatives, people I've hung out with in university, high school, have made "commitments" and have never kept them. The problem here is that, when someone says they're going to do something, the word "commitment" doesn't fall in line behind whatever statement they make. This becomes most painful when someone commits something to oneself, and realizes how far they've strayed later on. You promise yourself you'll learn a musical instrument, another language, you'll get thinner, you'll make more money, you'll eat better, you'll save more, you'll read, travel and create. A few months go by, and you see someone else jamming, you hear that foreign language, you double-look in the mirror, you groan one time too often while you're on the clock, you catch yourself before opening that small aromatic cardboard box, your bank account reads wrong, you see that book at the bottom of the clutter pile when the light shines on it at just the right angle, you see the travel ad and remind yourself of that place you thought of going a while ago but ended up going to "the cottage" or "the lake" or "up North", "Down south" in lieu of taking a vacation to somewhere completely unknown. And you made nothing.
I'm gonna try committing to one thing at a time. I'll start a new commitment when the old commitment becomes routine. Right now, my "routine" is to come home, eat too many PB and J sandwiches, watch too much Conan, get tired, have just enough energy to pack the bike bag for work, and then shower and go to bed without doing my physical therapy exercises. I don't know which commitment to start with, but I'm going to let myself decide by whatever feels most important right now.
There was one commitment which has become routine, almost. Since February, I've put 1537 bike commuting miles down, roughly $700 saved when adding gas, depreciation of vehicle, cost of car tires and cost of car maintenance. Sometimes I can commit. I wonder if I can commit to this blog.
