How contradictory these words seem at first sight!
Freedom is not the absence of commitment. It’s the ability to make choices. Including that of committing or not committing.
In commitment, there always remains the freedom to be fully oneself, on both sides, so that the commitment is true, authentic, complete and clear.
Engagement is not a prison. It is not even a promise to the other. It is a presence to oneself made up of conviction, faith and love for oneself and for the other in which we choose, every moment, to invest ourselves fully, to be totally present in the relationship, to ourselves, for may the best of each of us be offered at all times.
Many people are afraid to commit, for fear of being suffocated. It is often because we believe that engagement is a dead-end from which no one can get out alive! Yet it is precisely the opposite of that.
It is the path that we choose to take consciously and constantly, minute after minute, and to be totally present in it so that we are there for each other but especially ourselves for ourselves. The greatest commitment is in our promise to be authentic to ourselves. The other becomes the witness of our commitment, but not the guardian and even less the jailer!
We are all free, although we forget it most of the time. The other always remains the partner of our freedom, revealing ourselves to ourselves so that we can offload what prevents us from being completely true.
We all need each other to teach us to be fully ourselves. As long as we are committed to being authentic, we offer ourselves the full potential of being free vis-à-vis ourselves and towards the Other.
Engagement is also a powerful form of freedom. Commitment is the freedom to be yourself! And freedom is the commitment to be yourself!
