This is just one of those lazy Sundays when all I do is, well, LAZE around my small room. I spent the entire day watching movies while finishing my online work. As I was about to hit the sack, this movie featured in a local channel came on with a very interesting opening scene, so I stayed up to see where it goes. It was dubbed in the native tongue in accordance to Pinoy-taste so I was half-listening and half-watching it as I was trying to get some sleep. But the scenes that were evolving before my eyes stopped me from doing so. I ended up finishing the movie and writing this blog. Amen to that!
Anyways, the movie is about Bob, a single father who is always short of delivering his promises to his son. This time, his son is about to migrate to Australia with the aunt. On his way to the airport to meet his son for the last time, he received a random call from Grace, a woman who claimed to be kidnapped and in dire need of his help. What ensued after the call were non-stop action and plenty of phone conversations between the kidnapped woman and the accidental hero. In one of Bob's phone call to Grace, he told the latter to tell his son that whatever happens to him in this mess, that at least he has one thing he finished. If he failed his son many times, at least he didnt fail helping someone. But of course, the good always prevails, so in the end the kidnapper was captured and Bob was reunited with his son thereby fulfilling his much awaited promise!!
Why is a promise so important to be fulfilled? Is it because a promise speaks of your character? Is keeping a promise equates with keeping one's reputation?
Never promise to do something if you have no intent in keeping it. As relationships grow, maintaining it to be a meaningful one will never be easy because expectations are higher and more complex. How many you failed to do and how you handle it when you do is the key to understanding yourself and others. Building trust takes time, it is the foundation and a requirement for obtaining deeper engagement, but breaking it only takes one broken promise. Just one! That one broken promise if repeated creates a crack and eventually shatters, the pieces then become too hard to put together. We learn to trust someone because their character is transparent in their actions and while it cannot be assumed or bought, it is certainly valued. Once a promise is broken, the person who expects to receive it feels invaluable, then insecurity starts creeping in. When we can't keep a promise to someone who thinks highly of us, it communicates to that person that we don't value him or her. If we chose to put something else ahead of our commitment, it means that something else is more important. Threatening fissures develop in our relationships marked by broken promises may it be big or small. It breaches the trust. What is crucial is that if trust is undermined, it erodes. Kept promises strengthen a relationship, whatever it may be, but if broken, it diminishes one's reputation and sets a stage for a long and impossible road of redemption.
Bob's character in the movie seems to be a lousy one, not until he had his heart set to make his son believe in him again. He is on that long road of redemption and while it was quite impossible for him to finish the line, he tried with all his limbs and bones to make it, and he did. Lucky for him, really! But seriously, when Bob kept failing, he was not a welcome sight in the eyes of his son. The painful reality is clear, his son hesitated in trusting him again.
It is absolutely true that it is hard to trust a person who keeps breaking his/her promise. It can hurt people. On the other side, when we are sending the message of tarnished reputation to the people we failed , we are actually telling ourselves that we don't value our own word. We think it is not a big deal to let someone down, saying something we don't really mean, or failing to do what we promised we would. Wrong! Not keeping a promise is the same as scorning oneself. In the end, it can brign great damage to our self worth, confidence, character and our life. So keep your promise, be true to your word!!
"A promise is a promise. Some folks apply a rating scale, believing that breaking a big promise is inexcusable, while a small one is acceptable. That’s simply false. While breaking a big promise, such as failing to repay borrowed money, can torpedo a relationship, reneging on promises, such as being on time, casts doubt on future behavior." ~~franksonnenberg
