A New Definition of the Word Obligation
Language has power because it carries with it underlining meanings. What we call obligations also include promising a child we would be there for a dance recital, remembering a birthday, being there for a friend who needs us, nurturing a vital work program to a successful end, and delivering a loaf of bread to a neighbor. We usually don’t call these obligations because they carry with them such joy. It all really comes down to one simple principle: are we welcoming the commitments that bring us joy, meaning, and fulfillment? Then being counted upon to do our part will be the only thing we’d want to do.
Can we imagine a world in which no one was counting on us? In that world we’d be free to do what we want when we want because there would be no obligations to do anything except for precisely what we want to do. Everyone would be left to their own devices to either conquer or fall according to their own strength and genius and no one would get anything they haven’t earned because there wouldn’t be any way for anybody to be generous.
Some days we might look upon the care-free life we think we’d live if we had no obligations at all. But hopefully most of us trying to conceptualize that world is a bit hard and it’s certainly not the sort of world most of us would want to live in because along with the kinds of obligations we faced because we’re fortunate to have actual people who do count on us, come most of life’s most rewarding and fulfilling experiences.
The word obligation gets its negative connotation from the idea that obligations are constraining and ask us to limit our own personal freedom for the sake of doing things we don’t necessarily care to do and that takes away from our time and energy that we could use in other ways that we believe we’d be happier doing. But in reality all the word obligation in its most basic form means that we have made commitments.
We make commitments to our families, to our jobs, to our faith communities, to our kids’ schools, to our friends and to our partners. This is not a bad thing. It is simply how human interaction has always worked so long as we’ve been fortunate enough as a species to work cooperatively to solve the perplexing problems we needed to face so our tribes could survive. Our early ancestors committed to doing their part and since enough people followed through, whole groups survived and ate another day.
Family vacations, weekend adventures, building towers out of blocks with children, making dinner for ourselves and for family, listening when a sibling or a child tells us about a current concern, or even something as simple as deciding to make our beds in the morning, are all technically obligations. But when we broaden our view and interpretation of that word, we quickly realize that being engaged in worthwhile obligations—commitments that we are counted upon to carry out—can be beautiful thing.
Language has power because it carries with it underlining meanings. What we call obligations also include promising a child we would be there for a dance recital, remembering a birthday, being there for a friend who needs us, nurturing a vital work program to a successful end, and delivering a loaf of bread to a neighbor. We usually don’t call these obligations because they carry with them such joy. It all really comes down to one simple principle: are we welcoming the commitments that bring us joy, meaning, and fulfillment? Then being counted upon to do our part will be the only thing we’d want to do.