Now be honest.
Think about how many times that you felt it unnecessary to follow up on some things that to you were not that big a deal? But as a nay say-er I say to you things might not have that enormous importance to you but the person you promised it to it may very well have.
The only reason I am bringing this up is many associate keeping a promise with being an honest person, and in reality it is. All the below definitions are directly from Merriam Webster Dictionary:
Main Entry: 2promise
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): prom•ised; prom•is•ing
transitive senses
1: to pledge to do, bring about, or provide
2 archaic: WARRANT, ASSURE
3 chiefly dialect: BETROTH
4: to suggest beforehand: give promise of
Main Entry: 1prom•ise
Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'prä-m&s
Etymology: Middle English promis, from Latin promissum, from neuter of promissus, past participle of promittere to send forth, promise, from pro- forth + mittere to send
1 a : a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified b : a legally binding declaration that gives the person to whom it is made a right to expect or to claim the performance or forbearance of a specified act.
A breach of promise is the term used in the legal promise to marry. If you breach this promise you could go to jail!
Serious stuff, huh?
See, we mere mortals never take anything that serious, but we should.
The reason I am mentioning all this is because as a mere mortal I have been on both ends of the broken promise and neither end feels at all good. That is being the promised one, and then of course promising to do something that for some reason or another I could not fulfill, or come through, in my particular situation disappointment was the major fallout from either, but it could have been much worse, losing someone’s trust is devastating.
Then I pose this question to the world at large, why do it?
Yes, that’s right; I’m asking why do it make a promise that you have no intention of keeping?
Why can’t we just go ahead and do whatever is expected of us at any given moment in time?
And if keeping true to whatever we say is not only being honest with the person we promise to but also being true to oneself.
OK, barring any unforeseen circumstances that could have or would have prevented you from following through; why couldn’t you do what you said?
Self deprecating aside, now tell yourself your real reasons.
Would you believe you?
Interestingly, if we were to put ourselves more often than not in the other persons position we wouldn’t do half the negative things we do!
The word compassion comes from that form of humanity and separates us from the lower primates.
So you see keeping ones promise is a bigger deal than you originally thought, I bet.
I wonder if you are asking yourself: why this topic? Well, just thinking how the world is in such a mess with people who have not kept their promises to most any of us seems to fit that bill of a desire to know.
Ponder on Americans and the rest of the world we need to think on these hard times to try and not repeat them, and I say HAH to history since the main purpose of drilling our brains as children with that was that we, the, theory was that we would not REPEAT those same mistakes, HAH I say again, when or how is the better question will we ever learn?
PS Our cold front here in Florida will be tomorrow night, and yes even here in the south west portion we are expected to go down into the high thirties, inland colder, but we are on the water, at night but warm to the 60’s in the daytime.
Good night to all and to all never stop thinking as long as you can.
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