Promises

The word promise brings to mind a few different thoughts. For me it means a vow—making a pledge and following through on that pledge. Keeping your word(s) to others is an essential part of being human. But so many of us fail in this seemingly simple endeavor. We make promises to our family and friends to always be loyal. We make promises to our students to be consistent and professional. We make promises to God that we will be better people. We make promises to ourselves to become what we visualize ourselves to be. Too often, as the thoroughly run-down cliché goes, those promises are meant to be broken.

We break promises all the time. You promised that annoying co-worker that you would go to their party. You know the parties. The one where you stand around looking awkward because the co-worker only invited her family and you don’t know a soul. And naturally, they are all just as annoying as she is. And you know that everyone is going to talk about how cute the kids look, even though they all have that god awful nose and the one little eye that follows you no matter which way you turn—just like the co-worker. You promise to go even though you know that you aren’t. You will be at home watching all the television you missed during the weekday or picking the lint out of the dryer.

But that promise is drivel. What about the promises you make to yourself to get in shape and get healthy or stop shopping and spending needlessly. I suspect that most people make and break promises like that on a daily basis. Just this morning, I promised myself that I would walk to work. I didn’t because I wanted to spend an extra ten minutes shampooing my hair. Not that hair would do me any good if I die from a coronary induced by the pounds of beef I’ve chugged down lately.

I’m not even going to talk about the broken promises to God for fear of some eternal wrath. I imagine the broken promises to God are tantamount to raking salt into your eyes. We do it anyway.