I have to be honest. Cranking out an essay on dedication and commitment is not an easy task for me today. I am fried from a long week, which is really just latest in a series of long weeks. With regards to being fried, I would really categorize myself, not only as being fried, but as being somewhere between extra crispy and catatonic. My head is killing me, I’m more forgetful than usual and I’m really in a rather unpleasant mood. However, that seems to be generally where dedication and commitment begin.
Let’s take a closer look at how those two words are defined: According to Merriam-Webster, dedication is a) a feeling of very strong support for or loyalty to someone or something or b) the quality or state of being dedicated to a person, group, cause, etc. From the same source, commitment is defined as a) a promise to be loyal to someone or something or b) the attitude of someone who works very hard to do or support something.
Just as an aside, I think those are pretty lame definitions. In the commitment definition, personally, I would tweak the wording from “a ‘promise’ to be loyal to someone or something” to the ‘act’ of being loyal to someone or something”. My general complaint about the currently accessible definitions of words that describe standards of behavior is that they are generally relative in nature and make reference to feeling a certain way as opposed to acting a certain way, regardless of how you feel. This thought could spiral off into another essay entirely, which I’ll save for another time.
Suffice it to say that when I feel various ways such as tired or discouraged I can find all kinds of reasons not do something that I said that I would do. I think it’s a natural tendency to default to doing as little as possible when we’re feeling tired or discouraged. That’s why we need rock solid definitions of words such as dedication and commitment and respect and courage and truth and integrity and freedom. You get the point. We will always fall short when we strive for these ideals because we’re human, but we will sink lower and lower if we don’t keep these concepts planted firmly and clearly in our consciousness. They set the bar. You cannot ever raise the bar if there’s no bar to be raised.
When I first started at UMAC and I was still a white belt, I said to myself and to the people in my life “I can tell you right now, I’m getting my black belt”. I was so fired up right away that I felt carried along by the current created by that excitement. Fast forward many months and still love it just as much. Actually, I love it more than I did when I started. I love the discipline and I love the school and I love the people. In a nutshell, I love the path to black belt that I’ve chosen.
Here’s the thing, though. The love isn’t enough. Let me tease that out a bit. When fatigue sets in, either physical or mental, the love for a chosen path sometimes seems to go dormant. Sometimes you can lose sight of it completely. It becomes easier to make excuses, to take time off, to get lazy. Like air seeping out of a tire, that which was once a passionate pursuit, becomes at risk for deflating until it’s looked upon as no longer useful and eventually discarded.
Those who pilot small aircraft are required at some point to pursue their instrument training and work toward an instrument rating. The purpose of instrument training is basically to ensure safe continuation of flight during variations in meteorological conditions, such as flying though clouds, which makes you suddenly unable to see the path before you, which had up until that point been clear. The test to receive an instrument rating consists of two parts. The first portion of the test is a written or sometimes oral test to verify that the pilot understands the concepts of instrument training and the second portion is a test flight to verify that the pilot can apply those concepts in a practical setting. Pilots use a variety of instruments in the cockpit in order to stay on course including the altimeter, attitude indicator, airspeed indicator, magnetic compass, heading indicator, vertical speed indicator, course deviation indicator and radio magnetic indicator. Clearly, there are many aspects of location, which are constantly being measured. With all of those measures in place, even in the thickest of clouds, pilots have a pretty clear read on where they are in space at any given time and where they are heading. Yet it is not uncommon for a pilot to describe how disorienting it can feel to rely only on instruments and not on the measure that is most familiar, his sight, to keep him on course.
Those in aviation know that it’s not a matter of if you lose sight of your path, but when. It’s not a problem for pilots who are instrument trained. It’s a part of the game. And when it happens, they rely on the concrete measures that they have to guide them and they know that before long they will once again see clearly and fly freely. Martha King, one of the giants in the field of aviation training, describes instrument training as “trusting vision beyond sight”. I think that applies to dedication and commitment.
I’m going to look at dedication and commitment from a slightly different vantage point for a moment. When Minoru Yamasaki designed the World Trade Center in the early sixties, he allowed for some give in the structures which were otherwise almost inconceivably strong, which would keep them from snapping under pressure from wind or some other element. When I looked up ‘give’ in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, two of the definitions that were given were a) to yield to physical force or strain and b) to collapse from the application of force or pressure as a part of the process of remaining strong. As a part of the process of remaining strong. Occasionally yielding or collapsing under the pressure would, by design, make them stronger. I can see a link between strength and dedication and commitment. I find it much easier to keep plugging along on any path with I’m feeling strong, than doing the same when I’m feeling depleted.
I had the pleasure of working in Two World Trade some years back. That ‘give’ was quite present in our daily lives in the Trade Center. The wind was much stronger on the 54th floor than it was on the ground. I wasn’t even all the way up, so I was located much closer to the strong foundation of the building than were many on the higher up floors. Yet, from where I sat, I could feel the sway. There was an almost constant awareness that it was the ability to occasionally buckle which actually greatly enhanced the overall strength of the structure. On windy days, the sway was audible. Two of the strongest structures we had, towering over just about all of the other structures on the planet, would buckle and cry out under the pressure of the wind. If this is how the world’s tallest, strongest buildings were designed in order to keep them at their best, then there is certainly no shame in our occasionally buckling under the pressures of our daily lives. Dedication and commitment come into play when we choose to regain our balance and sense of core strength and continue on. Along these lines, it’s so interesting to me to notice that our frailty as humans actually does seem to be an integral part of our brilliant design.
By the way, certainly, without question, I bow my head for the lives that were lost when our Towers were attacked and leveled. Of course, I can only speak for myself, but I find that when my thoughts drift to those who were forced to summon immeasurable strength, but tragically, in spite of that strength, met their demise, I find myself instantly standing a little taller and a little prouder and a little stronger, ready to fight if anyone tries to hurt one of our loved ones again. That makes me think of a point that I find notable. With regards to the strength of others, as well as the strength of our Towers in a structural sense and for the purposes of our visual metaphor, the fact that something eventually made them crumble, does not take away from what we know of their strength. At the end of the day, there is nothing, organic or inorganic, which is invincible. We will all crumble at some point. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t possess what we need to be strong and dedicated and committed to whatever it is we have chosen to take on. We do what we have to do. The dedication engenders the strength, which in turn brings about the follow through on the commitment. Truthfully, if you switch those elements around, it still rings true. It seems to me that it may be the combination of all of those elements, at constant interplay with one another, which keeps each of fueled and productively moving forward.
We can methodically, intentionally and in a disciplined manner, keep ourselves strong and on course. At the same time, we can allow ourselves to occasionally yield to pressure and cry out knowing that this does not signify failure, but is simply an internal protective measure, which actually affords us to continue on. We, like our Towers were, are designed to be elastic. Invinsible? No. But capable of regaining our composure, standing tall and upholding our commitments to be stronger than we think? Absolutely.
We rely on our instrument training for guidance when we feel shaken by fatigue or discouragement and we know that even though we don’t always see with strong sight the path before us, it does not change the fact that the path is there. We know that even once we’ve regained our sight and our sense of being firmly on course, we will, at some point, be thrown temporarily off course again. However, we also know that each time it happens, when in spite of everything, we find it in ourselves to carry on, we become stronger because of it. That’s the gift of dedication and commitment.
Mary Ellen Baker Jockle
United Martial Arts Centers Lounge
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