Scared To Commit

We’ve finally reached that one week of the year in DC where the cold winter weather has broken, but the tortuous spring allergies and summer humidity have not yet set in. It’s the one week when I can throw open all my windows, read my book outside on peaceful park benches, and comfortably ride my bike to rehearsals - such joys!

Like many of us, it’s also the week when I feel the energy to purge, when I take stock of my home and belongings and decide what needs to go. Looking around my apartment and considering everything I have acquired in the past year, I see all the various unfinished projects that have accumulated. There's the basket of embroidery patterns and threads, cheese cloths and mason jars, the aerogarden, the guitar, cameras, notebooks, an old sewing machine. My house is a graveyard of all the hobbies I once thought would change my life, briefly attempted, and quickly given up.

Much recent discourse has centered around the benefits of The Hobby - The Atlantic, in particular, seemingly loves to discuss this topic (in How To Find A New Hobby, How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life, and Six Underrated Hobbies To Try Out, among others). There is certainly a lot to be said for trying out new things; it’s a wonderful experience to dip our toes into worlds we know nothing about, open our minds, and be introduced to people we might not otherwise cross paths with. And I believe that being bad at something, perhaps even failing, and being content with that, is a muscle worth exercising now and then.

But what happens when we spend too long flapping about between different interests, without ever really committing our time and attention to any one of them?

In her article for Substack, Commitment is the only secret knowledge, Isabel Hazan makes a case for shifting our focus away from “The Thing” and instead towards how we do the thing. It can be tempting (and all too easy) to get swept up in the latest hobby trend made popular by social media, or to be sold on particular routines and regimens as recommended by others - things we might spend money on and put effort into, only to try once or twice before quickly losing motivation and interest. Hazan argues that if we simply stopped bouncing around between all the different options and offerings that seem exciting at first, chose just one thing and committed to it, it’s that commitment that would make the real difference to our lives, and not the thing itself.

I find this fascinating; we live in a culture with so many choices: what to eat, how to exercise, what to wear, how to spend our free time and our money… we have hundreds of daily decisions to make. And with all of this comes the feeling that the best thing for us is just around the corner. It doesn’t help that we are constantly bombarded with information (and often, conflicting advice) about what we should be doing and how we should be living, and that if only we did those things, our lives would be better, healthier, happier, and longer. We are made to believe that the only way to get there, to reach this fantastical higher state of being, is to keep trying everything and the right thing will just naturally be the one that sticks.

According to Hazan, we may be looking in completely the wrong place. She suggests paying attention not to the limitless shiny new things you don’t yet have but instead exploring the different facets of what you do already have.

Hazan asks, “How much dimension can I experience from experimenting with just one thing?”

Novelty is easy, but sticking with one thing is where the real work is. Commitment means the mundanity of coming back to the same thing every day, repetition ad nauseam, slow progress, and sometimes even steps backward. It means not seeing any results for a long time and having the patience to be OK with that. It’s not glamorous, and there is no quick thrill.

But what does commitment bring instead? In my opinion, a profound understanding and deep knowledge that lead to real life enrichment. This could be accounted for in several concrete ways; it could be a project that earns money, builds relationships, contributes to society, or improves your health. There could also be many more intangible benefits that are harder to quantify: personal happiness, self-fulfillment, satisfaction, and life purpose. There simply is no substitute for time, and when we have lived with one thing for some amount of time, doors we didn’t even know existed become open to us. Sometimes, time is what is needed to spark the real change and growth that we might be looking for.

I also believe that commitment itself, like any skill, is something we can get better at with practice. I recently read Emma Gannon’s piece for The Hyphen newsletter about her experience of being tasked with reading 70+ books in a short space of time. She talked about the challenges of fitting all of this extra reading into her life and how that meant making changes to her routines, giving up time spent on other activities, and making a real commitment to the task. She also pointed out how her reading improved as the job went on and how that level of commitment became easier to handle.

The more committed you are to something, the better you get at that commitment, and the more pleasure can be extracted from it.

I’m sure many of us can relate to this cycle in some way: being overwhelmed by the challenges of a new project and then finding your stride once you have worked out how to manage it into your life. This is exactly what happened with me and exercise - it seemed so daunting in the beginning, and it was always such a monumental effort to fit in. But now that I’ve figured out exactly where it goes in my day, what it looks like, and what my expectations and boundaries are, it’s a commitment I don’t even think about anymore.

My point here is that commitment, while it takes time and adjustment, doesn’t always have to be difficult. We may even consider that reaching a certain level of commitment, like I did with my exercise and Emma with her reading, where one feels comfortable and settled, might be an easier experience in the end than the constant energy required to try new things.

I think it’s important to remember, too, that commitment doesn’t necessarily go (or need to go) hand in hand with mastery. My dad has been learning German for about 15 years; he decided to commit to it when I first moved to Salzburg and has practiced it pretty much every single day since. Despite this, and I am sure he would be the first to admit it, he is not (yet) a fluent speaker and still finds conversation intimidating. Does this matter? Not a bit. The daily commitment to practicing and learning the language, trying it out when he can, and using it when he travels, is what gives him pleasure and joy. So while I think it’s natural that dedicating so much time to a new skill or hobby will probably (hopefully) make one better at it, becoming a master or a professional doesn’t have to come into the commitment equation at all.

I certainly don’t mean to imply that we should give up on trying new things. On the contrary, I believe that experimentation is the necessary first step, even the key, to deciding what is worth our commitment. Perhaps what I’m suggesting is more the idea that we need to change how we approach new things: by listening to our real desires, sitting with them for some time, and considering that what we already have in our lives may facilitate them when looked at from a new angle. Doing this might lead us more in the direction of what we really want and prevent us from wasting time on the things we don’t.