I was in a meeting a few days ago and the importance of keeping our promises was mentioned. In this context it was all about the importance of keeping to our work commitments once we’d made them, but of course keeping our promises has a much wider remit beyond our work environment.
I would suggest that those who are able to keep all their promises are probably few, after all have you ever made a promise and then broken it? A promise to cook dinner, to walk the dog or get your report in on time? It seems that promises these days don’t have the ring of secureness that they will be carried out and so this challenges the definition we apply to them.
It seemed sensible at this juncture to take a peek in the dictionary to double-check my understanding and this is what it said:
“A declaration or assurance that one will do something or that a particular thing will happen.”
That seems straight forward enough. An up-front commitment to do/not do something in the future, so as to ensure a particular outcome, but as I’ve said earlier, this no longer seems to hold true in many cases, and so I wondered whether ‘vows’ would be a better choice for those promises we truly intend to keep.
Are vows not also promises to do/not do something or to behave in a particular manner? I headed back to the dictionary and found a slight, but profound difference with a vow described as:
‘A solemn promise’.
Of course this needed further explanation, and so I checked out solemn and determined that in order for a promise to become a vow, it needed to be:
‘Earnest, sincere, formal and serious’.
Ah, so there we have it: on the surface then, promises are light-hearted whereas vows are to be taken seriously!
Promises we make to others
We may make promises quite easily and perhaps even flippantly, sometimes not realising how the promise is being perceived. The person ‘receiving’ the promise may believe that the person making the promise is sincere and will indeed carry out the desired wishes, but the promiser may not take the matter as seriously and may therefore not consider it a big deal to renege on the promise.
In the workplace we also make promises, but they are usually known as deadlines. But are deadlines a form of imposed promise? When we are given a deadline at work or by some other company or institution that requires our action by a certain date are we not promising by proxy? We may not agree with the deadline, but failure to adhere to this date could result in a penalty.
This then is the pact with promises. Once we commit to them, it’s likely that our failure to fulfil the promise could lead to some sort of pain. So, we failed to cook dinner and our partner is now upset and moody, we didn’t walk the dog and now he’s howling in the back yard, that report we promised misses the deadline and our boss is angry.
But the problem with promises is that in some cases they can only hold true when all the variables remain constant. We can’t always know what other commitments may be forced upon us at the time we make the promise. We may indeed have been completely sincere when we said we’d cook dinner or walk the dog, but that was before a last-minute order coming through the door a few minutes before we intended to leave work… as John Green puts it:
“Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them.”
So, if we want to remain true to our promises, it’s important that we consider the true potential impact on our lives before we make the promise.
Promises we make to ourselves
But what of promises we make to ourselves? These are our promises to lose weight or to exercise more, to learn to play the guitar or to visit our relatives more often. Do these promises carry the sincerity of vows? Do we really mean to carry out these actions or are they just passing whims?
This is the dilemma. Sometimes when we make these commitments we keep them quiet, only telling ourselves and other times, we make a big show by joining a club or talking openly about our intentions.
But what exactly is this promise? Are we signing up to a new way of life or is this just a short term plan? If we acknowledge that this is the kind of life we want, then the only possible answer to this question is that it’s a life change. After all, why raise the expectations with our nearest and dearest that we will visit them more often if we then only disappoint when the initial enthusiasm wears off?
So this is where we run into the true difference between a promise and a vow.
In the end, it makes very little difference whether our promise is to another or to ourselves, failure to follow through to our own standards will affect how we feel about ourselves on the inside. Yes we can keep an outward demeanour of calm and insouciance but inwardly a little bit of our self-respect will be chipped away as we chastise ourselves for being rash and believing we could do it this time!
The Urban Dictionary sums this up with this wonderful definition of promises from a contributor:
[Promises are] “Blank hollow statements of comfort that serve no purpose other than to make someone feel better when you’re lying to them.”
Cynical? Maybe, but the trouble with this is that it is far too close to the truth and therefore more than a little uncomfortable for us to hear. 
Because, even when it’s a promise to ourselves, it’s the little ‘lies’ we tell ourselves, also known as excuses, for all the reasons we are not ‘able’ to carry through.
• I can’t keep with this diet, I’ve got too many social commitments coming up.
• It’s too cold/wet/hot to exercise.
• I’m too stressed to <fill in your own personal choice> today.
So what can we do?
I believe it’s time for us to raise our personal promise standards. To do this we really need to understand for ourselves whether we are actually making a promise to do or be a certain way or whether we are in fact succumbing to a ‘hollow statement’ for our own peace of mind or that of others whilst putting off the inevitable outcome.
However, as I’ve mentioned above, it’s very important to really understand the potential impact on our own lives. Whether it’s a promise, a vow or merely a good intention, this needs to be clear to ourselves and the recipient, because as Jennifer Donnelly says:
“I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you.”
So over to you…what do you think? Should all promises be kept or are they really not that important any more? I’d love to hear your thoughts…so please leave a comment!
Photos: Maroon Surreal , Peter Mooney