(The Nationalist, 25 June 2004)
The story is told of Hernando Cortez, the Spanish conquistador, that, when he went to South America to conquer the continent for Spain, he had only 700 men with him. On arrival, he burned their boats so that they could not even think of retreat. There was no going back, so they might as well commit themselves to the task ahead. Cortez wasn’t a man for hedging bets, for leaving open an avenue for escape. He committed himself totally to the task in hand.
People are afraid of commitment, maybe because of the speed and relentlessness of change. For example, young people are reluctant to enter into marriage. They see it as too big a commitment. They live with a partner and, if things don’t work out, they break up and try again with someone else. But by entering into a partnership in that frame of mind, they make a break-up more likely. The statistics of social science bear this out. And similarly with the reluctance to enter the priesthood or a religious order: life-time commitments are seen as too risky, too binding and too limiting.
But there’s a price to be paid for this. Where there’s no commitment, there’s no sense of belonging, of having roots. Life becomes a series of experiments, where we permanently sit on the fence, waiting to see what way the wind will blow. And that increases the sense (and the reality) of impermanence and uncertainty. It increases the sense of accelerated pace, of unending change, and it cannot but lead to shallowness and superficiality.
Human experience shows that the only life worth living is one lived for others, whether for a husband or wife, for children, for work, or for an ideal. All of those require commitment, the generous gift of oneself to the other. They require stickability, the determination to make things work, whatever the cost.
There are plenty of people, probably the majority, who live that way. Those who stand back are a minority.
An example of someone who committed himself unreservedly to an ideal is John Hume. Through thirty years of setbacks, false dawns, raised and disappointed hopes, he kept at the peace process until it bore fruit in the Good Friday Agreement. People with that kind of commitment are the ones who make a difference.
The supreme example is Jesus Christ who gave his life for others, who committed himself even to death. And that commitment brought about the salvation of humanity.