The Promise (Part One)

Ann K Gryczan
Dedicated to Timothy with love

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This is a post about a promise life makes to us and this promise is a doorway to happiness. But to find the door we have to go by way of responsibility.

Responsibility can seem very unglamorous, drudging and duty-bound, and not at all in the same league as “the promise of life.”

So how can it lead us to happiness? Let’s see how this works.

Responsibility seems like one of the hardest things we encounter on the path to our true selves.

It often feels like it tethers us to something we would rather avoid. We can try to avoid responsibility – we can walk away – but there it is still, patiently waiting for us around the next corner.

Responsibility seems to bind us until we wholeheartedly accept its intractable requirements. And then? It sets us free! And that is how it is a doorway to happiness.

What’s In a Word?

But the word “responsibility” doesn’t seem to say “doorway to happiness” or show us how to find it. So I decided to look it up. Words often carry a hidden message in their roots, and of course that turned out to be true for responsibility.

And there it was – underneath the middle English and obsolete French – the hidden message in “responsibility” is “to promise back,” that is, to return the promise. The first part of the word, “re” means “back” and the second part, “spondere” in the early Latin, means “promise.”

Responsibility is a promise we make, but first, it is a promise made to us.

Life’s Promise to Us

What does life promise us? To know who we are. But how? How can we know who we really are? That is the greatest puzzle of all.

Here is a clue: we live in a world of form, full of objects, events and people. If form is part of our experience of life, and life’s promise is that we can know our true selves, then, form must be part of the promise. The forms we encounter must somehow be related to the promise and serve to guide us in knowing our true selves.

The Original Condition

It seems like the very hardest forms to accept as having anything to do with us are those we first encounter: the parents we got, the circumstances we were born into and the things that happened to us. It can be easy to say, “I didn’t ask for this and I don’t want it!”

But if we apply the idea of life’s promise to these original forms – our family, circumstances and the things that happened – how can they guide us to happiness and knowing who we are?

Just think about it and in the next two posts we will go deeper with this question and how the original condition of our lives – even more than any other form we will encounter – is a doorway to happiness.

Until then,
Ann

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What do you think? How do you imagine your particular family and circumstances are guiding you to know your true self?
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 Let us know in the comments below!