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Commitment
Jun. 4th, 2008 08:05 pmI’m not a person that can really say a lot about commitment. I’m young and don’t have that much experience with it, as you guys know. But there is one experience with commitment that I would like to share, here.
Commitment comes in a variety of forms – to a person, to a task, to an ideal. At its heart, commitment is tied to sacrifice and assurance; to commit to something or someone involves sacrificing other things for that one, and assuring them of a place
in your priorities.
My experience with commitment has been more to ideals than to people, which should come as no surprise. As an EMT, the ideal I commit to is helping others - I sacrifice time and sleep every Sunday night to assure the township that I live in that if someone is injured, there will be help for them.
But the easing of pain and preservation of life is a common commitment; EMTs are not remotely alone in that – they are joined by medical professionals and volunteers of all sorts. Every Good Samaritan is committed to the same ideal that I am.
However, there is one commitment that I have come across that I think is relatively unique – the commitment to life in the face of imminent death.
We humans do not often commit to things that are likely doomed to failure; we don’t put our life savings into buying lottery tickets, we don’t jump off fifty-story buildings with the intention of living, we don’t try and move objects with our minds.
But working in a hospice exposes you to people that are doing precisely that. The residents of the hospice will not live their full lives. Most will likely will die in the next month. Survival rates, by the time that a patient is placed into a hospice, are less than 10% for a year.
But that doesn’t stop everyone working there from committing to life, even as they know of the inevitable failure. It’s different than in hospitals, because we are taught that while death is inevitable, we can often beat it back, push it away, and snatch back from the edge those that should not yet be there. With hospice care, it is accepted that death will claim those that we work on – and through that, we carry on.
It is inefficient. It is hopeless. And it restores my faith in humanity, every time I take my place in there. Through our efforts, we bring hope to those that have none.
It takes a great deal of commitment to walk in there, day after day. There is a reason that hospice care is not a field that many choose to go onto – the burnout rate is tremendous. How can it not, when you daily fail where you strive to succeed, and even the victories that you gain are cut short brutally and almost immediately.
And yet, we commit to it anyway. We sacrifice our mental health, our time, our energy for the sake that they may know that someone cares about them in the last few days that they have. We are there to assure them that whatever they have gone through in the past, we will be there for them at the very end.
That is what I know of commitment.
Commitment comes in a variety of forms – to a person, to a task, to an ideal. At its heart, commitment is tied to sacrifice and assurance; to commit to something or someone involves sacrificing other things for that one, and assuring them of a place
in your priorities.
My experience with commitment has been more to ideals than to people, which should come as no surprise. As an EMT, the ideal I commit to is helping others - I sacrifice time and sleep every Sunday night to assure the township that I live in that if someone is injured, there will be help for them.
But the easing of pain and preservation of life is a common commitment; EMTs are not remotely alone in that – they are joined by medical professionals and volunteers of all sorts. Every Good Samaritan is committed to the same ideal that I am.
However, there is one commitment that I have come across that I think is relatively unique – the commitment to life in the face of imminent death.
We humans do not often commit to things that are likely doomed to failure; we don’t put our life savings into buying lottery tickets, we don’t jump off fifty-story buildings with the intention of living, we don’t try and move objects with our minds.
But working in a hospice exposes you to people that are doing precisely that. The residents of the hospice will not live their full lives. Most will likely will die in the next month. Survival rates, by the time that a patient is placed into a hospice, are less than 10% for a year.
But that doesn’t stop everyone working there from committing to life, even as they know of the inevitable failure. It’s different than in hospitals, because we are taught that while death is inevitable, we can often beat it back, push it away, and snatch back from the edge those that should not yet be there. With hospice care, it is accepted that death will claim those that we work on – and through that, we carry on.
It is inefficient. It is hopeless. And it restores my faith in humanity, every time I take my place in there. Through our efforts, we bring hope to those that have none.
It takes a great deal of commitment to walk in there, day after day. There is a reason that hospice care is not a field that many choose to go onto – the burnout rate is tremendous. How can it not, when you daily fail where you strive to succeed, and even the victories that you gain are cut short brutally and almost immediately.
And yet, we commit to it anyway. We sacrifice our mental health, our time, our energy for the sake that they may know that someone cares about them in the last few days that they have. We are there to assure them that whatever they have gone through in the past, we will be there for them at the very end.
That is what I know of commitment.
