It’s
not that I have any unwritten obligation to blog every day. As a matter of course, the promise I made to
myself (and let me alert you to the fact I rarely make promises of any kind)
but in this case, perhaps I should say ‘vow’ or ‘commitment’ or even, ‘pledge’ to
post a thought, comment, idea once a day for a year; now that the year as come
and gone I allow myself to be distracted with tasks, chores, and obligations.
And
that’s the theme for today. Obligations orbit
our lives without comment. Like the moon,
we can easily identify it without difficulty.
Yet, obligations are deception and a handmaiden to guilt; which is another
useless energy vampire. But today, let
me stay on obligation because it is so silkily seductive. It goes like this: What was yesterday’s favor, is today’s
expectation, and tomorrow’s obligation.
Much like weeds, when we let past actions go unchallenged we unwittingly
sign on for more of the same; in the Army we called it the ‘silence is consent’
understanding. Say, out of sympathy for
the widow next door, having just learned of the loss of her husband, you see
their yard needs attention badly, so you go over on the weekend and you mow her
lawn. Well guess what? When you don’t go do it the following week,
you’ll be held in contempt. Why? Well
because you fostered an expectation of continued service of course. Oh and don’t even try to resort to ‘I never
said’ defense; especially to a poor widow, you swine. No, you are obligated to continue to mow that
lawn because you made the gesture, (albeit out of compassion) but you did the
dreaded good deed. Another saying from
the Army I might add, and appropriately so is:
No good deed goes unpunished.
Wait
a minute. We’re supposed to honor our
obligations, aren’t we? Sure enough we’re
encouraged to make steady-monthly-payments to retire that 30 year mortgage. Yupper, 360 monthly installments to pay
triple for that house; (not including the necessity of replacing the roof
several times during those 30 years, along with the water heater, probably several
times, the furnace, garbage disposal, paint, and probably replace the windows
as well. So sure, obligations help other
people just find-and-dandy. But to the
obliged, it’s a living hell that keeps on giving. There are countless underpinning prods to
keep us on the straight and narrow of obligations as well. The guilt of personal responsibility
unfulfilled is the weapon given for the individual to whip themselves with; and
we’re also counseled to do that adequately until we get-right with our
obligations. We’re told not to abandon
family, (even if they’ve done lots to earn abandoning) We’re advised to ‘stick out’ bad
relationships under the hope that the
abuse will someday subside; and its recommended that we stay the course in what
would otherwise be a failed-and useless effort to breathe life into a losing
proposition such as a job where we’re under paid; under-appreciated, and most
likely held in open contempt. We’re even
told to accept a bosshole as a necessary evil for the paycheck to pay that 30
year obligation on the house; when did accepting humiliation as a replacement
for self respect ever come out as good counsel?
Because we don’t have alternatives?
Hardly.
Why all of this? Yellow freaking fear; as Tom Hanks would say
in Joe Versus the Volcano. We are afraid. We tell ourselves we’re afraid of the
consequences of our actions than to follow our better judgment; but what we’re
actually afraid of is punishment. And
here’s the really, sad part. It’s the
punishment we heap on ourselves for not living up to a demanding, stringent,
inflexible standard that we can’t even recall how we adopted them as our values. We’re afraid of being inadequate to a
personal standard we hold for ourselves to meet, knowing all along we can never
meet it. Because that standard is
perfection; strive as we will, and struggle for all we are worth to reach it, we
know we never can; and the judge in our head reminds us that we never
will.
So we play the
game with ourselves making promises and performing on obligations because we
are deathly afraid of the alternative; which is living free, and that is the
worst of nightmares. Why? Because with
that freedom comes responsibility. The
judge in our head is the best deceiver of them all. The voice tells us that we will be punished,
but the threat is empty.
Like any promise we make for the future obligation that
doesn’t exist.
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