Stillness 11-8: This year a lot of us are having to make difficult decisions around holiday plans. Traditions that have been held for decades have been upended and are being reassessed. Instead of looking at the impending different-ness to the holidays with apprehension and gloom, let’s decide that it will be this way for this year. Short-term commitments can be refreshing. They take away the burden of trying to decide on something major, like breaking or creating life-long traditions. Change lightens us and inspires us—it doesn’t have to burden us.
One of my father’s favorite painters was Matisse—both as an artist and a friend—and one of his favorite stories was of Matisse giving him this advice: “Break your habits.”
They were speaking about art at the time, and the genius of creating great art, and it makes sense that you need to break your habits if you’re going to break barriers of what’s gone before and create out-of-the-ordinary wonderfulness of color and form. But we each can do this in our daily lives, if we look at every hour, every day as a canvas to splash color on.
There’s been a lot of research about how to form (hopefully good) habits by committing to them over the course of 28 days (or a moon cycle). More recently, researchers have determined that success in various endeavors (whether work-related or weight loss, for example) has to do equally with forming habits as it does with breaking them. It’s when we try to do the same thing in the same way for weeks and sometimes months on end that things become static and even stagnant. But when we bring our consciousness to our heart’s desire, things start to move. So instead of committing to doing the same thing every day, try committing to doing something different each day. Changing habits, like driving a different way to work or trying a different kind of tea is not just healthy but also satisfying. You don’t have to commit to a different tea, but you need to commit to trying it.
And we don’t have to know the outcome! of the commitment We have the idea that if we commit to something, we have to know how it’s going to turn out. But as the sages tell us, life is not a means to an end. It’s the journey that matters. One way to move past fear of commitment to something that you’re not sure about is to commit to something for a specific period of time. You can even commit to not doing something. Say to yourself: “I won’t think about that for three days.” Or, “I’ll make a commitment to call so-and-so every week for the next six weeks.” And don’t commit to longer than that – especially if the call is one you feel you ought to do but it’s not a lot of fun.
In the tarot, this sequence moves from the Lovers card, whose injunction is “Choose wisely” or “Choose what you love,” to the Chariot card, which has to do with committing to that choice. In the Chariot, you have embodied your commitment so that you are moving along with it, and in some instances having to pull your head and heart into the same direction.
What we discover about these cards is that choosing and committing to that choice is actually freeing, not hampering. I think the biggest fear of commitment people have is the idea that we’re constricting all the limitless potentials and possibilities that are available to us. But as the quantum physicists have shown us, nothing happens until we bring our consciousness to something–anything. It’s as though we do not exist until we decide to live and move and think and feel.
And it’s not about choosing what you love—since that isn’t always possible—but loving what you choose.
Of course, commitment in marriage is a different thing: it forges a life path. So does commitment to raising a family. Or to a creative endeavor. Or commitment to a certain career path. But even these seemingly portentous commitments are not so much high stone walls on either side of us, forcing us on a narrow path with a dull view. They are pathways to inner growth, outer experience. They are stepping-stones through clouds of light and adventure, as we quest, and set the stage, and splash, and practice, and try again and again at this interesting business of life.