Of Commitments (Revision and Re-Post)

“Excuse me. A pack of smokes please,” said one hasty customer.

That’s what I’ve heard from a young lady as I hurriedly went to the local pharmacy to purchase some over-the-counter medication for my seemingly recurring cough. I just can’t figure out why two questions lingered on my mind at that very moment.

• Why does this cough recur from time to time like a broken record of some sort?
• Why do people indulge themselves in acts like smoking a cigarette, only to discard it when it’s running out–like committing themselves into something serious but suddenly bail out when the going gets rigid tough?

Ask people around you and the answers to each question would startle even the most fervent convictions!

The answers to the first question:

• It might have been due to stress. My throat was probably at its threshold and the next thing that I knew, it could no longer take it; and
• The dirty environment around, topped with dust, heavy pollution, and other allergens, might have certainly been the probable cause.

The answers above are scientifically factual. But the answers to the second question can be something. The answers are:

• Human beings are prone to look for happiness, in whatever manner, shape, or form, regardless of the hair-thin line which separates black from white -- the gray area was borne of this harsh reality; and
• Although this technologically modern age brought the berthing of the concept “INSTANT,” stress is also keeping up with the pace in the INSTANT-race; people try to look for quick remedies to relieving stress and cigarette smoking is one, however quick the effect burns out as finishing a whole cigarette stick… INSTANT, so to speak.

Unequivocally, people nowadays treat commitments as temporary relaxants to the stresses of this life yet throw them away when the fire burns out. When the going gets tough, the commitments are going to be discarded by the so-called “tough.”

Here’s the epiphany. People equate commitment as to something like smoking a cigarette. They try to light one up to senselessly ease the stress caused by their insecurities and negatively stained mindsets; they release words of affections and promises only to be blown away by the wind as though they’re puffing out smoke from a stick; and they throw away the commitment when the passion runs out just as a smoker would discard the cigarette butt when she can’t puff anymore. The worst of all things that could happen is that the smoker would light up another stick immediately after she is finished with the one she just threw away.

“Hello there. Do you have a light?”, asked the young lady.


"Sorry, I don't.", I replied.


Then I walked away.