On a Summer of Commitment and Introspection

Reflecting on the milestone of marriage, and the importance of checking in with yourself

I have learned that summer is not the easiest season for writing. The days are long and often filled with sun-soaked activities. When I happen to be home, the increasingly warm temperatures limit the patience that I have for sweating in front of my keyboard. As someone new to the Pacific Northwest, where the summers are shorter than I am used to, it is particularly important to enjoy this time, knowing the bouts of seasonal affective disorder that await me in the fall.

For these reasons and more, I am spending as little time in front of a keyboard as possible. The urge to write has not left me, even if the habit has for now. There are not many readers here yet, which is perhaps why I feel comfortable spending this post on myself as a journal entry of sorts. Best case, it gets me back in the writing mood. Worst case, I lose a subscriber or two. As always, I hope someone finds these words well.

Commitment

I married the love of my life last month and the few weeks since have been filled with clarifying moments. There is something new in my soul that did not exist before. I have committed my future to someone and they have committed theirs to me. It is a resounding show of faith that I do not take lightly. It is something that we do not typically experience from other parts of society.

This realization hit twice as hard for me, as commitment was not much part of my life growing up. My parents constantly feuded, and could not make their familial commitment to each other last a decade. They also did not stay at one job for long, or keep a stable relationship with their family. I think they were an incredibly positive force on my life, but everyone has their issues. Personally, I switched hobbies, sports teams and friend groups often, leaving my childhood filled with short-term memories.

So, I had to learn about commitment first hand. With no examples to guide me, I have definitely stumbled through numerous checkpoints. I am grateful to my wife for her patience. I have needed every inch of it to finally come to the realization of why we need to embrace and appreciate commitment. And like most things that humans do, it is partly for selfish reasons.

We need someone that believes in us. Someone who is willing to tie their fortunes to ours. Someone we can confide in because there is nothing to hide from them. In an age of individualism and loneliness, many have forgotten about the value of commitment. For most of my life, I certainly did.

Commitment also has a tendency to change the weight and potential of your decision making. Careers, investments, vacations, relationships, all of these things change in scope when two people can plan and work towards them together. But something even deeper changes too, and it affects both single people and those who are married. Commitment expands your horizons, whether as part of a marriage, a new business enterprise, or a new hobby. Next time you move toward something substantial in your life, try to think of the commitment that is required to make the most of it. Let that commitment push you forward into a vast universe of possibility.

Introspection

Milestones are valuable opportunities to check in with yourself. Often, the circumstances leading up to a milestone tests you in ways that make this inevitable. It is not always pretty. Sometimes, the milestones are so substantial that you do not know how you will handle the changes to come. Sometimes, it involves a decision that you cannot make easily, or it asks you to give yourself more trust than you usually do. Before, during and after these milestones, observing yourself is important.

I try to be grateful for these moments of reflection, wherever they lead. Changes create tests which deepen your understanding of yourself. Milestones can be successful or unsuccessful, but even failure creates growth too, in the end. They can change how we perceive past events, turning negatives into positives or vice versa. As we all build our lives, introspection allows us to calibrate our trajectory by further contextualizing where we came from and where we are going. Here is my attempt to do so, after one of the most important milestones I have had so far in this life.

I spent most of my twenties playing it safe. Through family and friends, I had seen the dangers of immaturity and risk-taking at an early age, so I approached life cautiously. That had its value. I ignored student loans and went to community college, which allowed me to be the first of my kin to finish college and leave behind a tradition of blue-collar financial insecurity. As a student, I also worked full-time in order to build people skills and avoid debt. I enter my thirties now in what many would consider an excellent position. My career is humming at a good pace. I have learned how to cultivate healthy hobbies and relationships while knowing when to trim back the unhealthy ones. Oh, and the love of my life part, that’s been a big one!

Based on the simple generational calculus of being better off than my parents, I can firmly say that I am succeeding. In a time when most of my peers are behind on that metric, mind you. But not all is well on this summer’s bout of introspection. I still spot gaps in building the life I want to build. Most notably:

• I do not feel attached to any particular community or third place, which limits how I grow my social circle and how connected I feel to where I live

• I have ignored the artistic and risk-taking side of life far too much, leaning into a safe corporate career and forsaking my teenage dreams of being a small business owner and writer

• I lack consistency in improving my health, often moving from fitness-obsessed to couch potato and everywhere in between

I respect my past self enough to understand how these shortcomings have festered. Now begins the work. I am grateful that this summer’s milestone has given me an opportunity to appreciate where I am and recalibrate towards addressing these existing gaps. Luckily, I have a newfound partner in this. As my new wife and I approach these exercises together now, we are able to empower each other and overcome our own shortcomings.

I hope this little exercise was useful for anyone else who has observed how life can easily get away from you and those around you. Without introspection and milestones, years can go by where you do not progress forward on building the life you dream of. Throw in a dash of commitment, and we can all move closer to our dreams.

I’ll be writing offline for another month or two, most notably due to my first trip to Europe, and what I hope will be a memorable honeymoon. Enjoy your summer!