Reading time ~ 2 minutes.
Life is structured by our commitments.1 Alarms startle us from sleep, awakening us for work or to shuttle kids off to school or swim practice. Days are filled with obligations; evenings are organized around activities and agreements both explicit and unspoken.
Commitments are our primary source of motivation and meaning, but if we’re not careful, they can add up over time and begin to accumulate like clutter. Similar to last week’s discussion about how a chaotic environment can obscure what matters, staying busy can be a surrogate for purpose that allows us to avoid what’s bubbling below the surface.
In recent years, my crises of midlife have mostly involved being honest about which commitments have become too confining and which I want to double down on for the indefinite future. Like purging possessions, culling commitments, or even calling them into question, is excruciating at times. It’s difficult to admit that something that was vitally important in the past may no longer serve us moving forward. It’s difficult to disappoint people. It’s difficult to ask for what we need. But as I’ve taken small steps, I see how necessary this is to clear space for whatever is meant to come next, or simply to clear space that is better left open.
Although my own commitments have been forefront on my mind, I also posed the question on Monday in anticipation of my weekend—attending an outdoor marriage celebration for two friends who had originally planned to have their ceremony in July 2020.
Weddings are remarkable—it’s an act that is equal parts brave and crazy. If you consider the bleak statistics on divorce and the risk of trusting another person and the risk of inviting another person to trust you, marriage is downright crazy. For the exact same reasons, it is impressively brave—a balance between willful naïveté and unbridled optimism.
When it became clear the pandemic would prevent these friends from having their wedding last summer, they tucked his snappy blue suit into a backpack along with her bejeweled sandals and characteristically stylish white dress and climbed to a peak on the Pacific Crest Trail2 where they exchanged vows in a field of wildflowers with the cascade mountain range as their witness. Although the actual wedding was last August, and despite several challenges that tested their resolve in the last few weeks, they were determined to hold this gathering to honor their community of “cheerleaders and truth tellers” who had helped shape and support their relationship. Maintaining the privacy of what was said on the mountaintop, they didn’t repeat their vows on Saturday night, though they did share key snippets. Their messages about community, commitment and connection were helpful for one who’s been overly focused on parsing and paring down. Their closing words to each other are wise guidance for us all:
This is the adventure we’re on—we don’t take it for granted.
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And the commitments of those to whom we are committed.
which she trekked solo decades ago.