Perpetual Elements of Commitment
(Excerpted from “Committed Social Engagement: Catholic Social Teaching at Work in Society (College Textbook), Winifredo T. Nierras, Ph.D, Kindle Self-Publishing, ISBN: 9781073002276, pp. 13-23, June 10, 2019)
There are some elements in commitment that are incontrovertible. These include the following: a.) Every Commitment is a choice - Our choices more than any other act or operation of our faculties individuate and define us; By each act of personal choice the spirit of the individual begins to form the void of the self, ordering the chaos and shaping his person; By failing to choose, by remaining in a constant state of indecision, a person’s spirit is vaporous and, as it was, apart from him, hovering; When the refusal to choose leaves the work of God’s hands unfinished, then this peculiar kind of inaction takes on a moral dimension. Since the unique way of manifesting some aspect of the fullness of God, that every person is born to manifest, remains mere potency; Martin Buber has written eloquently about the evil of indecision. Buber would say that reality at any one moment is capable of becoming unreality if the person allows the chaos of “possibilities” to envelop him, imposing its “form of indefiniteness upon the definitiveness of the moment.” In his own picturesque way, Buber claims that it is through decision that “the soul as form” overcomes the “soul as matter.” Through decision, “chaos is subdued and shaped into cosmos.”
b.) Every Commitment is a Promise - The promise is a particular kind of choice. Unlike every other choice we make, what is unique about a promise is that it describes something we intend to do in the future, whereas any other choice is a formal determination about the present. By a promise one projects oneself into the future; Every commitment involves a promise. The most formal promises we make are commitments. The one making a promise is expressing his faith in his own power to do what he will to do; The one making a promise is not understood to be making a prediction about himself; he is asserting his firm intentions. He is not merely describing his present state of mind but is binding himself to a future course; Every promise binds the one who makes it to some future action. A promise creates a communion between ourselves and those to whom we have given our word. Our promises and commitments free us from being wholly locked into the present; The person promising constitutes something between himself and another or himself and the group to whom the promise is communicated. A new relationship or network of relationships, consequently, is thus created; By making promises, a person goes far beyond the here and now. He is saying to those to whom he gives his word that he is in charge of his own life and that he freely chooses to use his freedom to project himself into the future in the specific manner which he determines. He gives his word because he is free to do so and does so freely. But the word he gives puts him in communion with others. His word takes on flesh. His future and the future of others are now intertwined by his own determination and intention; The making and keeping of promises are an expression of one of the most ancient needs of man. In fact, the two great institutions of Western society were built on promises. The Judeo-Christian religion grew out of the covenant promise God made to Abraham. And the Roman Empire built a legal system based on the inviolability of agreements and treaties. Human beings have gone out from themselves to their fellows in promise and covenant. People have come to rely on and to count on the communion created by the words they give to one another. Promise is what holds society together and staves off barbarity, according to Miss Hannah Arendt in her book The Human Condition. c.) Every Commitment involves Freedom - The refusal to make commitment and the unfaithfulness in keeping the commitment are usually the result of freedom; Apparently, freedom and commitment are incompatible. Several axioms about freedom that are seemed to be embraced by many young people today are expressed in ways such as these: if one would preserve one’s freedom, let him avoid committing himself; the greater the number of options a person has, the greater the freedom he enjoys; all a person must do to increase his freedom is to augment his capacity for having his own way; and freedom is the capacity for indefinite revision, the ability to be always doing something different; The first meaning of freedom is the individual’s capacity to be self-determining. There are several things that should be said about the capacity for self-determination. First, a person who imagines himself to enjoy a freedom that is never specified believes in a freedom that eventually cannot exist. Human freedom must be exercised in order to be. “Freedom is not the capacity for indefinite revision for always doing something different,” Karl Rahner has observed, “but the capacity that creates something final, something irrevocable and eternal.” Second, once one’s capacity for self-determination is exercised, the object chosen will in turn determine the person. We are free to choose, but we are not free to reconstitute the reality of the object chosen by us. It will stamp us with its shape. We become what we love. Third, our capacity to be self-determining creatures has a social history which antedates all of us. But this history acts as a deterrent to the proper exercise of freedom. Our capacity to be self-determining does not come down to us in a pristine state. We have inherited the misuse of freedom known classically as original sin. This limits our capacity for self-determination and has the effect of both blurring our perceptions of what is good for us and weakening our desire to choose the good; The second meaning of freedom has limitation which is referred to freedom in a context. The point to be made here is that freedom does not exist apart from a particular context. Furthermore, there is no such thing as finding oneself in a context in which an infinite number of possibilities are open to one. Just as freedom in the first meaning must get down to particulars, freedom in this second meaning must always face the particulars one’s life is circumscribed by. Every context is circumscribed logistically, geographically, historically, and socially, to mention only a few of the factors limiting it. Each person’s attempt to be a self-determining individual does not take place within a vacuum but within an increasingly complex and dense set of circumstances. Every individual’s exercise of freedom changes the shape of his neighbor’s freedom and vice versa. It might enlarge it or constrict it; The third meaning of freedom – the property of freedom in the act that one undertakes; the experience of freely choosing this or that object. It is only in the exercise of one’s freedom that one assures it; by non-exercise one runs the risk of losing it. To attempt to live one’s life in a state of indetermination is the surest way of becoming unfree, because then one will be determined by forces outside oneself. Our freedom, once exercised, furthermore, always becomes part of the history that is ourselves. To ask for any other configuration of myself to reality would be tantamount to asking that my word not be listened to, that my actions be disregarded, or that my person be taken without seriousness. Since we would not have others regard our freedom or our person so cavalierly, neither should we take our own freedom so disparagingly. Freedom is rooted in the realities of social, historical, and personal existence. d.) Nature of Commitment[1] - Fr. Michael Moga, S.J. says: “commitment is the act of giving one’s self to another person or to some human activity or project.” It entails concrete involvement and not merely a desire to give one’s self. So a mere “desire” without translating it into concrete “act of giving oneself” is not commitment at all. The landscape surrounding the concept commitment involves important features which include the following: Not every human act is a ‘committed’ act Commitment is governed by human act and not by act of man. The former is an action that is considered to be carried out with knowledge, deliberation, consent, and voluntariness; while the latter is an action that is done involuntarily, without knowledge, and without consent like the act of sensation, the beating of the heart, and the act of delirium during sleep. Acts of commitment are special acts that require mature decision beyond the superficial level of existence. In this sense, it is possible that a human being can spend his or her whole life without ever attaining commitment. He or she may live without ever dedicating himself or herself to anyone or to any community. His or her marriage may satisfy all the necessary legal requirements but it may lack any deep actual personal involvement. He or she may spend much time at a community but it remains an activity, duty or task with which he or she never personally identifies. Commitment is missing. Commitment demands a concrete involvement Commitment goes beyond mere ‘talk’ and ideas. We may spend hours and hours speaking of our desire to serve the people or love humanity but until we actually serve or love concrete people there is no possibility of commitment. Commitment demands a concrete expression. Commitment involves a response to a transcendental call Commitment goes beyond the satisfaction of personal needs. If a man is committed to his wife or family, he is not just seeking his own satisfaction or pleasure. He may be attracted to his wife and family, they may satisfy many of his needs: for sex, for security, for comfort, for respect. But his commitment goes beyond these satisfactions and the proof of this is that even when these satisfactions are absent or when he is frustrated the truly committed father remains true to his family. He is answering a call that is more than a personal need. Commitment requires self-forgetfulness In all true commitment there is a self-forgetfulness. A person ‘loses’ himself in the object of his dedication. He losses himself in something bigger than himself and becomes identified with it. If he gives himself to his family, it means that the object of his concern is the welfare of his family. If he immerses himself in a profession, trade or career, it means that his efforts are pointed toward the excellence of that work. From this it is evident that there can be no true Commitment to one’s own self. Commitment always points beyond the narrow self toward a larger reality. Commitment is unconditional There is an unconditional character to any commitment. A commitment which is given ‘no matter what happens.’ There are, of course, degrees to this unconditionality since some dedicated acts are more qualified than others. A commitment to friendship is generally less unconditional than a commitment to marriage. The marriage partners give themselves to live with one another, to love one another and to be faithful until death. They bind themselves to love even if this love brings pain, even if their marriage is a failure, even if their marriage partner proves unfaithful. In a similar manner the man who dedicates himself to a ‘cause’, career or profession accepts in advance whatever may happen to him in that dedication. Commitment entails a rising above time The human person changes physically through time, his or her feelings necessarily change. In commitment, the person promises to be faithful despite these changes. For instance, a dedicated husband is faithful to his wife even after the physical attraction has gone. The committed man thus lives on a level that is somehow above the changes of time. Commitment is permanent[2] There is an intrinsic connection between “forever” and some commitments. The most congenial way we humans have of showing that our commitments are unconditional, it is to say “forever.” What is the justification for so total and irrevocable a disposition of one’s life? Fr. John Haughey believes that the justification for this kind of human behavior comes down to this: A better way of growing has not been discovered than to put down roots. The parable of the sower suggests that the putting down roots admits of a variety of depths. The yield one produces in life can run anywhere from an immature seed size to an abundant hundredfold harvest. The difference will be due largely to the use, nonuse, or abuse one makes of the word “forever.” The intention of the planter in giving his word, plus the ground one’s words falls on are two of the variables that cause the outcome to differ so greatly. Which is to say, some permanent commitments lack depth because of the person who makes them and because of the context which has received them. If the intention of the one making the commitment is timid and tentative, then when difficulties arise, the superficiality of the roots will be exposed. (Mt. 13:4-9, 18-23) Or the problem could be with the soil, which is to say, the context within which the commitment was made. It could be too cluttered and incapable of sufficiently nurturing the commitment made. Or it might be rich and the intention of both parties profound, but the result will still be sadly wanting. Competing allegiances, the clutter of too many secondary commitments, inconsistency about priorities, inability to order one’s life according to clearly seen priorities – these and any number of other factors can inhibit the growth of the seeds from reaching thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold. Justification of Permanent Commitment The most convincing evidence of the value of the irrevocable disposition of one’s life must always be in the fruit that it produces. A permanent commitment is justified only if the object of one’s commitment is consonant with fulfilling the transcendent end each person is capable of attaining. It is traditional wisdom to see that the only way a person fulfills himself is by transcending himself. And the most efficacious way a person can get outside and beyond himself is through another person – through love of another person, to be more exact. Self-transcendence through self-donation. Love is the only Justification Love is the only justification for the permanent disposition of one’s life. Love is the only intentionality that warrants the outlay of one’s total self. Only in love can the needs and capacities of human beings be fulfilled. Any commitment dynamic that intends permanence and yet fails to flow from love, or at least give promise of leading to love, will prove to be a deterrent to growth and transcendence. Permanence in interpersonal relationships, if built on anything less than love or the aspiration to love, can be cruel to all parties concerned. This will be the inevitable result if social stability or social acceptance is the only reason for the liaison’s continuance. Holding someone to an interpersonal commitment because he has made a contract whose terms must be observed is an inhuman way of maintaining the social order. If the loving remains, the permanence of the commitment is assured. But loving involves many different acts. One of them is a kind of dying. There must be continual vigilance to avoid reverting to the kind of thinking of oneself and solitary acting and planning that characterized one’s life before the commitment. It is at the point of commitment that a person is both rising out of self-absorption into a fuller life and yet dying to a solitary mode of being. What is the precise nature of the dying that a commitment entails? The key ethical characteristic of a commitment is the claim one yields to another over oneself with regard to one’s future. In a commitment we enter a relationship wherein we are bound to future free actions because we have entrusted something of ourselves to another on the basis of which that other has a claim on our action. We recognize a ground of obligation in the being of the person of the other, to whom we commit ourselves. Forever in Commitment The other-centered characteristic of permanent commitment is challenged when such commitment take the focus off of the other and rivet it on oneself. It is natural to attempt to invest with the quality of permanence what we have found to be good – that is, a relationship in which some measure of indwelling takes place. And so we use the word “forever” when we have found what or whom we wish to be in union with time without end. “Forever” describes the disposition one makes of one’s future, at least insofar as one’s intention can determine the future. “Forever” is more than an apt way of expressing the quality of unconditional love; it also expresses an aspiration for permanence. Fr. John Haughey says “aspiration” because at no one point does permanence becomes an accomplished fact. Nothing human is permanent. “Forever” should not express an aspiration to persevere “come what may,” but an aspiration to become together come what may. What is inimical to permanent commitments is fixity, which is to say, the failure to become. What makes a permanent commitment work is that one becomes and yet one does not change one’s intention to become together, or to share one’s becoming with the other. This does not necessarily mean that one’s becoming must always take place directly with the person or the community to whom one is committing oneself. The commitment implies that one will “bring” one’s becoming to the other, not that this becoming will always take place together. Communion in Commitment Communion flows naturally from indwelling, just as indwelling flows from self-donation. Like indwelling, communion is created and sustained by words and deeds. The deeds that bring it about and keep it in existence are many – generically, the deeds of caring and sharing, giving and receiving. Deeds done in love generate communion. But words, too, create, sustain (or ruin) communion. The words that create and sustain communion are many. But chief among them are words of love which carry promises with them, and chief among these, of course, is the promise of “forever.” Human communion is broken by the absence of love, by breaking promises, by withdrawing one’s word, by changing the meaning of one’s word, by infidelity. But Marcel puts his finger on something subtler than any of these which is also inimical to human communion. He observes that some perseverance in commitments takes place at a superficial level. He calls this kind of perseverance “constancy.” But mere constancy can have a demeaning effect on the one for whom one fulfills one’s duties. Fidelity, on the other hand, is more than the performance of promised actions. It is constancy plus unction of heart. By fidelity, according to Marcel’s use of the term, one preserves the interior sentiments that initially caused the person to commit himself. When the love which inspired the initial promise continues to animate the one promising and the one to whom the promise has been made, then neither party will become an object of the other’s duty. Marcel’s distinction is a good reminder of how wrong it is to look at our own lives or the lives of others merely in terms of behavior, because according to that measure, constancy and fidelity would be undifferentiated. Marcel’s distinction is also a good reminder that it is not the intention of permanence that should keep a commitment intact. A union of hearts is the stuff of human commitment. If such a union exists, many difficulties can be withstood. If a union of hearts is slight or virtually nonexistent, then any difficulty can bring the fragile relationship to an end. To aim at permanence in commitment is sterile. To aim at a greater union of hearts within the communion already experienced will be a more effective and efficacious way of attaining permanence in commitment. Concentration on permanence looks at an effect rather than a cause. Withdrawal from Permanent Commitment Is there any justification for withdrawing from a permanent commitment? The answer must be sought in terms of communion. It must be dealt with in terms of oneself and others. In general, one could say that withdrawal from a permanent commitment is as undesirable as the removal of a plant from the earth which nourishes it. Transplants are called for at times. In other words, when the communion which the commitment should have led to, or to which it aspired, is nonexistent and gives no sign of being able to come into existence, then withdrawal from one’s permanent commitment may be warranted. But if the withdrawal is simply a resistance to the pain that growth requires; if the individual refuses to accept the paschal nature of love (i.e., dying and rising); if the individual refuses to see that indwelling and communion come about by dealing with and working through misunderstandings, boredom, mutual hardships, lack of communication, character deficiencies, each other’s sinfulness, and the natural sufferings that flesh is heir to. Thus, withdrawal from permanent commitment should not be warranted. [1] Excerpted from the Philosophical Essay of Michael Moga, S.J entitled Human Commitment as a Religious Experience [2] Excerpted from John C. Haughey, S.J., Should Anyone Say Forever? |
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