Broken Agreements

How do we decide which agreement to keep and which to break? I realize now, that for a really long time, I measured myself, and therefore others, I’m sure, too, on how they kept their agreements with credit card companies. Did you make your monthly payment? Check. On time? Check. This makes you a good citizen, successful, right? Not that I haven’t know plenty of people who have had problems paying bills on time, off and on, I’ve been one of them. But since my divorce (an agreement to stay married which I didn’t keep); I’ve been patting myself on the back around fiscal issues, even though I’ve struggled with them. I’ve still not recovered from the loss of my equity in my home, another agreement, a social one, that homes don’t lose value, that was broken not by me, but by others. 

So, who gets to decide what to abide by, what not to abide by, and why? As I walked around Lake Harriet today, I saw two guys walking 18 dogs between them. It was pretty amazing actually, how they’d get all the dogs to stop and wait while just one of the dogs had to, you know, drop something. A jogger smiled and said to another, “I’d like that job.” And it made me think, that wow, I like my job, and it also made me wonder, what if, when children are young, we told them, “You get to do whatever you want to do with your life and the universe will support you. It’s that easy.” Because really, and truly, it is that easy. But we make it hard. We tell kids all the time that life is hard, and school sucks, but we had to do it, and work is just a part of life, and paying bills, and making agreements and pretty soon this kid is all caught up in anxiety, just like we are. 

I am deciding now which agreements to make and break and keep, and even wondering why we have to make agreements and commitments and why can’t we just do what we want, all the time? Seriously, all the time. Because you know what, that is what we do. We make agreements with ourself to stay bitter, we make agreements to stay small, we make agreements not to ‘rock the boat.’ We make bitter, crazy, agreements all the time, and then we hold ourselves to them. Like the agreement to believe that if everybody just did what they wanted the world would be a mess. I'd like to see. Maybe agreements should just last through the day, like, for today, I will still be angry as a way to protect myself. For today I will go to this job I hate, but maybe tomorrow I’ll craft a plan for something different. For today I will love all the people I encounter, and do this day by day, until I realize I do have enough love, every day. Making agreements I agree with, that’s what I do, now.