Our commitments are made with our aspirations in mind. The aspirational type is largely responsible for the commitments we make. This means that we consider who we will be in the future when we are making commitments in the present. This can cause some issues. Sometimes progress is not made in the order that we expect. Sometimes commitments conflict with each other. In situations such as these, we tend to demonise prior commitments and view them as distractions. It’s no fault of our own. Destiny often clashes with the paths we plan for ourselves. The question is, what can we do to help this?
When a new goal emerges, it tends to come with a greater sense of weight and seriousness than commitments prior to it. Anything less often fails to occupy the aspirational type because we have more serious things to attend to. Likewise, the commitments we made beforehand start to become light and trivial as we focus our sights on other things. When these previous commitments start to make demands on our time and resources, it frustrates us. We feel subject to needy and trivial demands that feel as though they only get in our way. Pretty soon, old commitments start to lose their charm. It may even be something we start to condemn.
Such a situation gives us an opportunity to be assertive. We are experiencing increasing demands on our time, energy and/or resources. We need to figure out what we can and can’t do. The assertive way to do this is to practice enforcing boundaries. A strict boundary may feel harsh. More often than not they are kind though. By providing a clear, practical boundary, we give those prior commitments the opportunity to prevent themselves from being demonised further. Hope is left for those we were committed to beforehand. We may begin to see the good again after we have dealt with more pressing matters.
When we’re on the receiving end of this, we tend to become more needy rather than respecting these boundaries. The person we felt a strong commitment to has suddenly started to withdraw from us. We must then consider how committed we are ourselves. If we are committed, we will not waver when this happens. This doesn’t mean we can keep asking them to meet our needs. The respectful thing to do in this situation is to hold back. To do this, we must learn how to cope with distance without replacing what is distant. This requires a fair deal of patience. Hope provides us with this patience. By practicing hope, we make ourselves stronger. We can start to make do with less.
We’re all in the same boat when it comes to commitments. We all want to honour the promises we made to both ourselves and the people we care about. While those who are put at a distance should hope for the future, those setting boundaries should be firm but fair. If we can stick with someone without burdening them or demonising them, we may then have our cake and eat it too. We may pursue our dreams while supporting another’s. We just have to be patient and careful.
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