What is your word worth?

How good are you at keeping your word?

Once upon a time, handshake was considered enough to bind a pact or sign a contract. Traditional folklore and legends throughout the ages are based on this. The phrase “A man of his word” was coined to honour such folk.

A lot of people had a really definite sense of honour regarding their word. They identified themselves as somebody whose word was law, to be honoured at any cost even if there were no witnesses or signed documents to testify the promises or agreements. Of course, there were those who still thought of playing underhand games and betraying their promises for personal gain. They thought they were being smart, sharp and sly. These were seen as the villains and the bad guys of the situation. Looking at it from a compassionate point of view, these were the weaklings, hungry for external trappings of wealth and power to feed their inner voids.

In the world of today, even when things seem to be spiralling out of control, we can still meet amazing people who live by their words.

We respect them because they walk their talk, in all their imperfections of human form and limitations.

Are you one of them?

What is your word worth?

When you say that you will do something, and then you do not do it, or do not show up, either because you forgot, or got distracted, or you simply don’t feel like it any more, you start looking for excuses and reasons to justify not keeping your word with the people that you had taken an appointment, agreement or understanding with. If you actually dig deeper, you realise that in your mind is looking for excuses and justifications to mollify its own sense of inadequacy and not show up in bad light in front of others, who we feel will judge us. Oftentimes we think that by providing a truly relevant and valid reason, things are somehow set right. We make it right in our heads and go on about our life until the next time and the next and so on and so forth, becoming really adroit at cooking up fantastic valid motives for not having shown up as promised. The sad part is that we end up believing these untruths!

Untruths make us sick.

It would help to remember that when we break our word, it is not to the other person or the external world, it is actually to ourself. We are reiterating to ourselves that we are not worthy of honour, of being reliable to ourselves, of doing what we say and saying what we do. All the subterfuges and tricks that we adopt in order to get by, are in reality, insidiously undermining our self-esteem, eroding the worthiness of our identity. Often without realising it, we fall in our own eyes while our brain seeks to justify each occasion. We seek to maintain an external image but we cannot truly fool ourselves, and it pulls us down in the long run.

When you look into the mirror, who do you see?

None of us is perfect, we are all doing the best possible in the moment, but an awareness in being honest foremost with ourselves can go a long way in leading us to maturity.

The next time you are tempted to break your word, just give a moment’s reflection to how it affects your identity and self-esteem. A good reflection will go a long way into helping you think before you give your word lightly or make promises that turn up empty. You are the first person you let down. Realising this is maturity.