Jason vs. The Courage of Commitment

“Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.”

-Robert Sternberg (psychologist and psychometrician, author of the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence)

I like running.  I really do.  I have a passion for it.  The feeling that I get while running, the excitement, joy, are panacea for all my ills of the day.  When I break through that mental wall of pain and exhaustion and finish my scheduled run, sometimes going past, there are no superlatives to describe the intensity of self-satisfaction.  All of these things fuel my passion for it.  All that being said, it is just a passion for me.  Running is still all too easy for me bypass for the day.  Forgoing a run or cutting one short doesn't yet hinder my day.  There is no intimacy.  I don't 'know' running yet.  The commitment is harder still.  Commitment isn't a choice.  Commitment is just something you do.  Currently I still have to choose to run.

Don't get me wrong, I am committed to the Great Race.  I will complete my leg of it.  Of this I have no question.  There is no choice here for me, and I can't see any eventuality otherwise.  I have made my commitment and I will stand by it.  It's the smaller steps to getting there that trip me up.  Where the focus is on living up to myself, that is where I struggle.  I will complete this Great Race partly because I have people that I am committed to as well.  But I may be starting to see something.  My reflections could be bearing real fruit.

My commitments are external.  The Race.  My Teammates.  Nowhere in that paragraph do I say or imply that I am committed to myself.  That's where the true strength for me is needed.  It's easy for me to make these promises.  To attend the group events, to provide my input to help shape and direct our efforts.  As a team.  The promises to others I can make without hesitation.  When someone else sets the bar, I am excited to be the best at clearing it.

“He who is most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in performance of it.”

-Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French philosopher)

Maybe my promises shouldn't come so easily.  I can't think of the last promise I made to myself.  Is it because I may know, at some level, that I won't follow through on it completely?  Do I employ subtle subterfuge against my own efforts?  Does it even reach that far? 

Looking on the things I've done well with in my life, have they been for me?  I have a passion for photography, but I've never worked towards improving my skills on it unless I've had an assignment coming up, be it a portrait sitting or wedding or something similar.  I have a passion for drumming, but without the pressure of performance bearing down on me, I'm content with my skills as they exist, not pushing myself to improve.  Is it a lack of something to measure myself against?  It's not an aversion to the work or the time spent, I expend those both willingly when there is a clear external goal.  Just not when I've set the goal myself.

“Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

-Vince Lombardi (American Football Coach)

I need to start visualizing my successes in this exercise.  Not the team's.  I need to start at my own.  I need to promise myself.  It can't be good enough for me to finish.  I need to finish well.  I need to get myself to the place where I can perform at my best.  That is how I can best help the team in the Race.  I need to see myself running through that finish line, and passing off to the cyclist.  I need to see my place.  Not the team's place, my own.

In making that promise to myself, it encapsulates my promise to the goal.  To the team.  Part of that promise is working towards personal fitness.  Part of that promise is working towards the fitness of the team.  To being a working member of the group.  To making the outings and events that the team participates in the best that I can, in my way.  To helping, poking, prodding, begging, whatever it takes to help the other members reach their goals.  I need to make this commitment all the way around, to myself and the team.

It's time I take back my will.  Time for it to work for me.  My will shall shape my future.