Commitment is hard. It’s hard to deliver on commitments when so many other things compete for our time and attention. And, therefore, it’s hard to make commitments. Because we don’t want to bind ourselves to something that, in time, may reveal itself to be less advantageous than the alternatives. Alternatives that we are not aware of today.
So we build the ejection seat. And we know that if gets tough out there, we just pull the lever and we’re out of the commitment.
When you really truly need an ejection seat, they’re damn fine things to have around. But I wonder what effect they have when we don’t really need them. And I have to tell you that I think they pull us out of the situation a bit. We’re not really in it when we know we have an out.
A commitment is a cost to be sure. It forces you (if you’re ethical) to do things you agreed to in the past even though something better has come along. But commitment also brings benefits. There’s a certain psychic benefit to being “all in.” I think we all perform better (at whatever) when there are stakes. And we feel the joy of success so much more acutely. I don’t mean to suggest that having an ejection seat means there are no stakes. You still may fall on something painful. But it does lower the stakes.
When I think about a life filled with ejection seats, it seems quite empty to me.
