Commitment and change
Marriage is a commitment that requires embrace of change. (Image by Susanne Nicolin)
My friend Tyler is almost a year into a round-the-world sailing trip.
However, he’s in the midst of selling his sailboat and buying a different one. A trimaran, acquired in New Zealand. (He did not sail to New Zealand; he got there by plane.)
One of the things I admire about Tyler is that he doesn’t have a lot of rules for himself. He has lived off the grid. He’s lived on the grid. He does what he wants. He’ll keep sailing as long as he wants to, and then he’ll do something else that he wants to do. If he doesn’t want to completely circumnavigate the globe, he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to do it all in one go or all on the same vessel. He’s not trying to set a record or something. He’s just living his life.
Living without arbitrary rules is more fun. That said, rules can be helpful. Such rules help me to commit to something that I want to do in the long term but may not want to do in the moment. What I find tricky is choosing the moment in which I will renegotiate one of my commitments to myself — that is, change the rules.
For example, suppose I’ve decided that I’m going to, like Janelle Monae, wear only black-and-white ensembles at my public appearances. What happens when I find an incredible red dress I really want to wear?
Or maybe I’m a musician who’s been doing a weekly online concert since the early days of the pandemic. How long do I keep that going?
Or perhaps I’m a vegan who is considering not being one.
It can be as simple as responding to the itch to do something else without questioning it. But sometimes that itch comes along right away, and we never commit to anything. Or sometimes quitting or changing at that particular moment would be really expensive and inconvenient.
To work around the commitment issues and the logistical issues simultaneously, we can structure our rules as a temporary experiment.
Such an experiment can be time-bound: We can challenge ourselves to do a specific thing or live a specific way for thirty or ninety days and then reevaluate. Or it can be defined by a measurable goal: We can work hard at a particular endeavor until we reach the target we’ve defined.
In this way, our rules become the rules of a game. We still have the opportunity to practice the discipline of making a commitment, but it’s not forever. We’ve built in a waypoint at which we can restock and keep going, change the rules, or quit.
What’s more, we can build in an additional set of rules that allow us to, without compromising our integrity, shut down the experiment at any point if certain criteria are met.
In structuring our projects this way, we experience a balance of constraints and freedom.
We can work on writing a novel for 30 days and then abandon it with no compunction — or choose to work on it for another 30 days, and then another.
We can give ourselves a certain time frame for the DIY kitchen renovations we’ve been meaning to do. If the work is not complete at that point, we will turn it over to a professional to finish.
We can alternate a half-mile of walking and a half-mile of running for three miles, but the minute our knee starts hurting, we walk back home.
Our rules never need to confine us or burden us — they’re meant to move us forward and help us become who we want to be. That process can be as inconvenient or uncomfortable or as fun and exhilarating or as cozy and safe as we wish.
Some of our rules are values that we hold deeply. but some of them, we can freely reconsider. Figuring out which is which is the work of a lifetime. In doing so, we can make room for both commitment and change — two mechanisms of our growth and development.
