By nature, I prefer to be an optimist. I can’t explain it other than it just feels better. And being the narcissist that I am, I can’t understand why anyone would choose to be pessimistic and feel miserable rather than be optimistic and feel, well, better. I must admit, though, as I close in on my 50th birthday, I find that it takes more effort these days to be optimistic. It could be age, but I don’t think so. I think it is a consequence of our times.
How could this be so? I believe that too many people are breaking too many promises. It’s so easy today to renege on our word. “The situation has changed!” “Something has come up!” “Even though I will see you only once a week, it will be ‘quality’ time.” “I’m too busy!” “It’s out of my control!” “I never really cared for you, anyway!” “I didn’t say that exactly!” “You must have misunderstood what I said!” “We can’t afford it!”
We really have developed a striking command of the English language to assist with our lapse in promise keeping. Maybe it has been the proliferation of the legal profession, which taught us, with the precision of a surgeon, how to negotiate our verbal skills in such a way as to feel justified in abandoning our commitments. After all, we could debate all day on what “is” is.
Maybe it’s really just a numbers game now. There are so many people today that if we break a promise with this person, we can just turn around and make another promise to someone else. If I fail to make a weekly payment, I will keep my television anyway and go next door to rent a VCR from another company. Or, if we fail to live up to our agreement with a customer, another one will stumble through the front door just any minute now. If an employer fails to provide an employee a promised bonus and the employee quits, that’s all right, there are plenty of employees out there. I can just steal one from someone else. Or, I know I promised my boss I would take care of his business, but I have problems of my own. And besides, he’s making a lot more money than I am, anyway.
It’s not like we have a void of role models. We have a president who has broken his oath of office, a Congress not doing the people’s business, editors slanting the news, television talking heads ignoring the facts for ratings, family businesses that allow no time for families, businesses suing customers, customers suing businesses, businesses suing businesses and customers suing their government. Families are breaking up, parents abandoning children and children shooting children! Wow!
Hold on now, you may say. You’re wrong. It’s not the use of skillful vocabularies nor is it a numbers game. It’s really the coming of the next millennium.
No! Wait a minute, it’s the Y2K problem! That’s what is really behind all the promise breaking.
Don’t you sometimes feel like doing something about all the broken promises around you? The way to start is to make a conscious decision to keep one promise to someone, no matter the cost or the excuse. I’ve tried this lately and, you know, I feel a little better about all the madness in life. We can also help make a better world by pointing out a person’s actions that has broken a promise to you.
Just these little acts can help restore a bit more of those elusive feelings called optimism. Of all the feelings we can cultivate, optimism about ourselves and the world around us creates the fewest negative consequences. I believe that by so doing, we can achieve greater successes in our families, our businesses and our country than we could any other way. Help make a better world by pointing a finger of shame at those who have broken a promise.
