Intentional commitment

Note: slight spoiler alert for Mickey 17. It’s possible that I’ll follow up with a part 2 to this, at some point.

The year is 2054. Mickey Barnes struggles to survive on a dystopian Earth. Desperate to escape a loan shark, he signs up to become an ‘expendable’ on a colonizing spaceship expedition without reading the fine print. Let’s just say there’s a reason no one wanted to become an expendable.

This scene from Mickey 17, where he mindlessly fills in ‘expendable’ on his application sheet, aptly mirrors our real-world commitment patterns. Desperation often drives our commitments — financial pressure pushing us into soul-sucking jobs, fear of being alone making us cling to relationships that have long expired. The desperation may be real, but we also rarely question these narratives we’re subscribed to.

We take it for granted that we don’t have a choice because we can’t bear to take responsibility for the consequences if we were to choose differently. We want to avoid uncomfortable feelings at all costs. Yet we’re surprised when the sensible, easy option ends up depleting us. It’s okay though because at least, we can blame our circumstances and we can’t lose something we haven’t put effort into, right?

How many of my commitments did I choose and reflect what I truly value is the question that I’ve been thinking about.

I came across this piece on commitment by Sindhu, who does a brilliant job at articulating what I just said, much more elaborately. ‘Commitment is an act of agency,’ Sindhu writes, and the fear of commitment signals the lack of it:

If we were to flip that on its head, the fear of commitment is really a failure of agency, of taking full responsibility for our choices and their consequences. A kind of learned helplessness dressed up as freedom. I think that’s why commitment feels so heavy to some people. You’re accepting full authorship of something, and you can’t blame circumstances or timing or compatibility for much longer. You’re essentially saying ‘This is my choice, and I accept responsibility for making it work’.

When I first read this paragraph, I left a comment hypothesizing that this “learned helplessness” can be a result of having been forced into certain commitments against our will, and I wanted to expand on this.

Growing up in an Asian household meant following an invisible codex of ‘good’ choices — subjects to study, career paths to pursue, what makes a good daughter or partner. When you ask parents about the origins of this codex and the why, you’re met with a dismissive “it’s just how it is” or “because I said so.” This is one way of being forced into certain commitments.

I witnessed two types of people in this household and my extended family: those who commit without questioning, almost needing commitment for a sense of identity, and those who prioritize personal autonomy and commitment on their own terms. For years, I swung between these extremes as an awkward amalgamation — 35% default committer, 65% commitment phobe.

The commitment phobe in me saw commitment as a permanent sentence with ‘forever’ stamped on every choice I made and feeling like a part of me needs to die. Meanwhile, the default committer side saw leaving as catastrophic and destabilizing: who am I without this career or this relationship? (I’m being dramatic, but you get what I mean.)

There are different ways this played out in my experiences. One is that I gravitated towards commitments that either had a set date or ones that seemed to promise forever, which I took for granted. I’d feel relieved when the set date had passed but also devastated when the forever promise wasn’t kept. Commitment became perpetual worrying. I worried that if I commit, it’ll turn into endless obligation or that it’ll come to a premature end; worried that I won’t be able to stick to it or that I’ll fall apart if it ends.

Eventually, I got tired of oscillating and realized that both approaches are tied to the same issue: having an underdeveloped intuition from repeatedly being taught to ignore it.

A strong connection to our intuition should accurately guide us to the kinds of commitments that align with our core values; I’m convinced that it’s the foundation for acting with agency. Without it, we’re just making choices based on reactions to the past and holding ourselves back from growth — some of us flying high in the abyss on personal autonomy and others weighed down by commitments worn as badges of honor. All in hopes of avoiding one thing: the risk of losing ourselves.

Part of my own path to willing commitment has been to fine-tune my intuition, and part of that was developing self-intimacy. I used to think I knew myself well because I’d spent a lot of time learning about myself in isolation. Knowing who you are when there’s no one around is important, but the more crucial part of self-intimacy came from observing myself in relation to others. Relationships revealed my triggers, reflected disowned parts of myself, forced me to set boundaries, and taught me to say ‘no’. I cannot stress how much the skill of saying ‘no’ has helped accelerate my progress to becoming a person who feels okay about certain (!) commitments — not heavy, nor flighty. It helped me understand where I begin and end, and how much I can bend and morph before I get into self-abandonment territory.

Once I had a solid trust in my intuition, making intentional commitments became smoother because I was finally harmonizing gut feelings with healthy doses of logic. Fixation on time and permanence used to give me a sense of security, but it’s a misunderstanding of commitment’s very nature. Commitment with agency isn’t about permanence, it’s about presence. It means showing up most days (some days you just don’t want to) for as long as it makes sense, which could be for a long time or just a season.

Finding these kinds of commitments requires effort. It’s hours of inner dialogue, grappling with what ifs, and discovering what lights us up. I’m not sure if it’ll ever get easier, but commitment that emerges from this intrinsic place — that’s the kind that lasts.