Commitment

I knew all these artsy photos would come in handy. 

This summer I had the privilege of being at 6 different weddings. As I’ve mentioned on this very blog, I adore weddings. I love the celebration, the gathering of people together, the beautiful words, hymns, songs, prayers, words spoken. But possibly most of all, I love what it symbolises. Commitment to one another. To sharing passions, dreams and hopes alongside the difficulties of keeping going when it’s tough. Bearing with one another and fighting through the problems. Enduring and not giving up.

I’m being challenged by this buzzword, commitment. Not in the romantic sense but how committed I am to things I say that I care about. At the minute I’m being challenged outrageously to be committed to running. To be honest, I don’t want to be. In fact, I’d quite like to chuck my trainers out of the window at the minute and relieve my ever-aching legs.

I’m trying to care about running because I want to achieve my goal of actually running a half-marathon.

But recently I’ve been challenged about how committed I am to end poverty. You see, when you work in a big charity and get paid to fight poverty, it makes recreational poverty fighting a lot harder. I say recreational poverty fighting like it’s a hobby to invest in, rather than something we should all be getting involved with. I don’t mean it like that, of course, but there’s the problem.

This weekend there’s a climate march happening in London. I’ve been writing resources about climate change and I understand the science, the effects, and how it’s already impacting lives all over the world. Yet, a little bit of me inside has been reluctant to get involved on Sunday. And when I challenged myself on the issue, I realised it’s because it felt too ‘work’ related. The sort of cocky attitude inside me that whispered, “but you do this stuff everyday, so you don’t really have to get involved - at a weekend.”

So here’s my confession, my marriage to ending poverty is becoming one-sided and selfish. I’m becoming complacent and apathetic outside of my 9-5 working day. I’m not doing all of those actions that demonstrate true commitment; forgetting to keep going when it’s tough, not sacrificing when I should. It’s a pretty bad marriage, at the minute.

I need to care about poverty ending because I want us to achieve the goal.

And that means getting involved on a Sunday. If I can pretend to care about running, I can definitely care about this. And more than this. It’s praying for change, it’s taking actions, using words, talking to anyone who will listen about how equality needs to be a thing, And while I’m on my soap box, it’s yelling at people that climate change is actually happening. It’s causing floods in Pakistan, droughts in Malawi, erratic weather in Zimbabwe. And it’s pretty much certain that our actions have caused this mess. We need climate change in the other direction.

But you don’t need to already committed to this. You just need to care a little for other human beings and use your presence to make a difference.

Come with me?

Commitment: "The state or quality of being dedicated to a cause or activity."