New Year's Resolutions?

Promises made were meant to be broken. This appears to be a truism more and more in this society and times. We hear so many politicians make them, only to get elected, without any compunction of conscience it seems, when they break them. We see more and more couples breaking up and breaking their promise to each other at the altar. We hear of prenuptial agreement. Doesn’t this in itself say that both signers of that agreement suspect that their promises at the altar will not be kept?

Does the idea behind making a promise get so lost in the scheme of things that they have become a worthless set of principles? There was a time when only a handshake sealed a business deal or declared a friendship. Now if that deal is not a written contract it is a worthless deal. Promises, it seems, no longer have any meaning to people unless it is a promise from someone else. Yet, we declare that promises kept are the backbone of anyone who seeks to possess integrity.

You cannot buy promises kept. You can only buy those promises that were never intended on being kept in the first place. Then when it is broken, blame is never accepted for it but excuses come by the hundreds in finding blame elsewhere.

It is useless in this day and age to even try to make a promise meant to be kept. It is far better to just do the thing without making a promise in the manner that you would have if you had made a promise. That way there can be no accusations of broken promises when you do not follow through and the things that you did do are known within yourself as a promise kept. It would seem to me that any promise given is first made to yourself and to another secondly.

We hear a lot about how dysfunctional this society is today. I wonder if we were to trace that dysfunction back to the source, we might find that the cause is due to broken promises? Isn’t the very fiber of this nation based upon the promises found in the Constitution? It is promises made in that document that is the very glue that unites this nation. It was broken promises that prompted the creation of this document in the first place. It was the broken promises that lead to a war where brother fought against brother.

This is a New Year. A time that we each make promises for the year. How many of those promises are we really committing ourselves to fulfill this year? If we are not committed to fulfill them then of what purpose did it serve to make that promise in the first place? Has the idea of the meaning of integrity been so watered down that we make promises in a haphazard way these days? Maybe integrity is not lost if the only person that knows a promise was made is himself or herself.

I don’t know, but I do know this. It saddens me to know that our children and grandchildren will grow up never knowing the feeling one gets when a business deal is confidently consummated by a handshake alone. They will never understand the feeling of integrity in its original meaning, the feeling of pride that comes from trust declared in that handshake. We seem to have lost that feeling when we, as a society, decided we could solve all of societies problems with money.

Life itself is a time for learning all that we can. It seems, though, that the more we learn about life, the less we know, in regards to that which is important for the journey of life. However, as he shrugs his shoulders, that is only a gripe of one man.