I was browsing business related websites when I came across a close friend's business website. In the box where you can write a few lines introducing yourself he wrote something along these lines. " I am a person with a happy disposition who can't stand commitments and duties. I love people and love life."

His words made me think about commitment and duties. When you put it like this, commitment and duty, these words truly don't sound too good...However, I started to contemplate what these words mean to me and how they apply in our lives.

A few questions came in my mind right away. How can we love people and how can we love life without commitment and duties? To love people means we are committed to those we love, look after them, take care of them and their well-being in every way. Love requires serious commitments. I am using love in a general term, love for human beings and not in romantic sense at first. Later I will elaborate on commitment in a romantic relationship. I find quite fascinating that the English language does not have a separate word for this while in my mother tongue, Hungarian, different types of love is clearly defined and would never confused.

Don't we have serious commitments to our children, our partner, our parents, our family members, our friends and to our colleagues? If you like, we even owe commitments to our society, the population and all living creatures on Earth and to our Planet? We are all connected. Everyone's actions effect everyone else in some ways. How loyal, reliable, caring and affectionate a person is plays a very important role in our society, in our circle of friends and family and is crucial to our happiness as couples.

Our commitment to life is the key to our survival. How many people you know, who decided to give up on life when tragedy, sickness or ill fate hit them. As an individual, we need to be committed to look after our health, to feed ourselves with the best nutrition, to drink enough water, to exercise, to rest, not to smoke, not to drink and not to take drugs. Not to get killed on the roads or at work. Our life is a daily commitment to survive our daily trials. So we have daily duties and commitments just to survive a single day and to repeat it over and over again!

The greatest commitment we all have is to ourselves. To look after ourselves, to stay healthy and to create a decent living to ourselves and to our loved ones. We owe ourselves to reach our full potentials as human beings and to further improve ourselves every day throughout our lives. To grab opportunities and take chances, be it studying, work, business opportunities, creative pursuits or sport activities to stretch ourselves every day in our lives.

We are here on this Planet for a reason. To find what our mission is in this lifetime and fulfill that mission gives us a purpose while we are here. To spend our time making the world a better place and leave some positive mark that we will be remembered puts a positive spin to our personal story. Not everyone can be a president, an inventor, a Nobel prize winner, a celebrity or a famous artist. But we all can contribute in our small but positive way.

We all owe to our parents, who sacrificed a lot to bring us up, to put us through schooling and loved and cared for us to prove that their sacrifice was not in vain. I like to think that I made my parents proud and went further than they had the chance. Most importantly, I like to make myself proud that I worked hard enough to bring out the best I am capable, to reach my potential and stretch myself as far as I can. That I explore what I am capable and what kind of talent is hiding in me. To explore what else is there in me that should be developed and put in service of others.

When it comes to romantic relationship with another person, that requires a lot of strength and character. To take care and love yourself such a way that you also can do this for another person shows real maturity. To generate so much 'surplus' that you can place that in to the box that you share with this other person and fill it with all the things that a great relationship needs is not easy. Frequently we forget that if we keep taking things out from our relationship box, soon it runs empty and there will be no love left between those two people. However, if we can keep putting things into that box and it just keeps filling, these two will have spare for those rainy days that come in every relationship sooner or later.

Don't we all wish for a partner who will love and cherish us in health and sickness, in happiness and sorrow, who will support, respect and love us no matter what? Don't we all want full commitment and loyalty from the person whom we choose as partner for life? I, personally, the more I like something, the more I love someone, the more committed I am. I like to think that the other person would feel the same way. That it is a two-way street.

To be part of society requires commitment. When we know the boundaries and fulfilled our commitments that is where freedom, happiness and great life starts. Work hard, play hard.

What are the commitments that you owe to yourself?

Cheers, Piroska