We live in an age where people are less than honest about their commitments. Marriage, parenting, work, school and faith are victimized continuously by failed commitments. To be certain, there is no shortage of tempting proposals, some real and others imagined that threaten our resolve to remain committed. The old saying,
“The Grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.”
It is still just as accurate today as when it was first said. Wilson Pickett sang,
“Don’t let the green grass fool you, Don’t let it change your mind.”
Expresses the extremely deceptive nature of your perspective when you look across the fence from your current vantage point.
Consider your vows, the things you said before witnesses that you would begin, and carry through to completion. While you may not have verbally stated your intent, be certain that your actions communicate your intent. If you began the thing, your actions say without question, I plan to finish this thing.
I often counsel young men and women; Don’t act like a boyfriend or a girlfriend, if you don’t intend to be the boyfriend or girlfriend.
Your actions are a statement of intent that carries even greater weight than your words. For instance, if I said to you, “I Love You!” and proceeded to slap you, which would carry the greater weight, my words, or my actions? Conversely, if I said, “I never want to see you again!” Yet the next day, I call and invite you to lunch every day of the week, send you gifts, and the like; you would conclude that my words meant nothing because my actions are the real indicator of my true intent.
You might even seek a restraining order against me. The reality is that there is no difference between word and deed (actions). When we behave as though our word and our actions are separate from one another, we are being irrational at best and lying at worst. At the heart of integrity is the idea that there is no distinction between what you say and what you do.
Without integrity, everything that relies upon it may crumble. The structural integrity of your chairs we sit it, the home we live in, automobile we drive must be dependable for our own safety. The integrity of personal commitments is especially crucial for our exclusive, intimate relationship, meaning marriage.
We are prone to disdain the life we have for some fictional life we might have had given different decisions, circumstances, and actions. Like the character Walter Mitty, from James Thurber’s acclaimed short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, we concoct fantasies that speak our latent desire to be bold and daring.
The real danger is that our fantasy is not our reality. Fantasy is always the stuff of legend; it takes place in the best of all possible worlds, a place where the variables of life are ever tipping in our favor. Yet the reality is not fantasy. Our lives are full of moments of pleasure and joy, and yet it is the presence of challenge, struggle, and pain that give your pleasure its power.
The grass can be green on both sides of the fence if you keep the commitment you began with and stay on your side of the fence. The other yard is someone else’s point of joy to experience. Remember that reality is not fantasy, that your actions do not take place in the vacuum of your imagination;
- where no one is ever injured,
- loved ones never feel ashamed or embarrassed, or
- a lifetime of valuable work remains untarnished by a moment of indiscretion.
In truth, reality takes place in the actual and fragile world of human beings, where the tipping points are many, and the crashes are often fatal to committed relationships.
You are the commitments you make, whether you keep them or break them. Fortunately or unfortunately, you get to decide.
Remember, the only reality is the commitments you make everything else is a fantasy.