On Keeping Commitments
Version 1.0.0 - November 1, 2024
There is a certain irony in the fact that a project that I started as a way of keeping track of my interests (I’m talking about this website) seems to have turned into just another fleeting hobby. There was a part of me that expected this to happen, and another part of me that is actually not too disappointed.
I have always been constituted of a certain wanderer’s attitude that has found itself getting too bored – or too restless – to stay with one thing for very long. In the past, that restless attitude with regards to my interests did well alongside my restless attitude with regard to location and routine. Not only could I never just stay with one hobby for very long, but also with one job schedule – switching from part time and college work, to full time, to two part-time jobs, etc. – or one location – frequently taking trips by the time I had a car and could afford them. As of writing this, however, I have been dutifully employed full-time for over a year, having graduated college and found a “real” job. I had hoped, at least in part, that the responsibilities requiring me to stay employed would in turn affect a change in my attention span, allowing me to focus on projects more long term.
It does not seem that that is the case, but I don’t want to get away from “long term” so soon. After all, that was the point of this project, to track small changes over a long time. The point, however, was not to ignore it for any extended period of time. So does that mean I should rethink the project? Maybe not so much. I do think that it means I ought to investigate the “meta-project” that this website constitutes – that this website is a project that serves both my other projects, as well as the project of itself. Where do I start with that? Well, right here I’d say, writing this very article.
I do not know where I first heard it, but a question sticks into my mind: “How many times will you realize before you finally realize?” That is, how many times do I have to learn the same lesson before it finally affects a change in my thoughts, behavior, or constitution? Is there ever a point where I will “get over it”, so that I can finally “get over it?” I think that the Buddha’s teaching on dukkha and samsara is inclusive of this tendency – not only to repeat the same mistakes, and not only to be aware that you are repeating the same mistakes, but to be aware that you were already aware that you were repeating the same mistakes and simply lost that second-level awareness somewhere in the cycle of conditioned arising and cessation.
Dogen1 said, “If you do not become a buddha at this moment, when will you?” I have to believe that there is a truth underlying this question, that the ability to affect a change in one’s life, one’s attitude, one’s behavior and thoughts and habits, exists within the present moment (and only within the present moment, for, after all, when else can it ever happen?). Only in now exists the possibility of becoming a buddha, only in now exists the possibility of ceasing to make the same mistakes (or beginning to form good habits), and only in now exists the ability to finish – or at least continue – the projects you started. These things won’t happen in the future, and after all, where did planning ever get you (the five-year plan I laid out at the end of 2019)? And how did “five more minutes” in bed ever make you feel? Only more tired than if you had just got up five minutes ago.
Thus, I shouldn’t beat myself up for not sticking to something as consistently as I hoped that I would have. I should only realize my mistakes (or recognize what I falsely perceive to be mistakes), and move forward within the present moment. I enjoy having this website, and I enjoy knowing that it’s waiting patiently on some webserver somewhere for me to return and love it once more.
1pg. 180 - Zen Master Dogen, 1985, Moon in a Dewdrop, ed. Kazuaki Tanahashi. North Point Press. ISBN:0-86547-186-X