A fools promise

“An ounce of performance is worth a pound of promises” - Mae West

It is not uncommon to hear mutterings in the form of promises from kin, friends or partners. They are not usually loud or bold statements, rather they are subtle, as if they do not want to be held accountable to more than one person; and for good reason. Often there are more complex issues in the background: relationship problems, fear or wanting to protect someone from sufferance. There is no issue with issuing promises based on these grounds. The issue arises only when we fall subject to our own fallacy – believing, as the promiser and ‘promisee’, that all these promises will be met with physical action.

‘I promise I will be fine’ was one of the first assurances I can recall. It was also the first time in living memory that I had been truly let down; as I watched my Grandma convulse from a stroke following a routine CAT-scan. Many emotions swirled around my body following her death, yet resentment was the one that surprised me. In my ten year-old mind I had been lied to in the most-cruel of ways – after all she had promised to remain healthy yet she never made any attempt to do so. She had refused to take her medication or adhere to medical advice. Nonetheless, the crucial element I missed in all the chaos of emotions is why she felt she needed to promise such an unachievable reality; my only guess is that it came with the realisation that she would not survive. Perpetuating our hope was her way of easing her own fear, as without hope there is little to enjoy in the world. So, from a superficial outlook at least she had proclaimed an empty-promise, yet it is not always so black and white. Her action was in protecting the innocence and beliefs of those people depending on her, as such performance is a merely a matter of perspective.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in this grey-area of perspective is easily lost. We forget our partners fears in the midst conflict or our colleagues when make a mistake at work. Emotion is a powerful catalyst when making assurances and when we forget that it can manifest as distrust in each other, in institutions or authorities. A performance entails countless mechanisms working in the background to ensure its success, yet we judge it only on the final product: a tangible response. As a result, we cannot see minute progress, or understand the flawed premise of emotion-driven promises. Despite the best efforts of firearm referendum’s and promised gun-control measures through the Obama administration, there was no effective control measures introduced in the United States. Looking at this it could easily be deemed a failure or ‘broken-promise’ as there was no physical outcome in the magnitude of the hopes of his supporters. Yet in doing so, we fall subject to our own fallacy once again, as we measure fulfilment through whole numbers, rather than fractions.

Promises in our contemporary world are made to be broken. Not because of the way we undertake satisfying them, yet because of the way we view when they are successful or not. If we as a society are going to continue to see performance as fully complete and physical, then we will continue to have more assurances than action. Conversely, if we suppress our expectation behind things we are promised, we will see more action as the veil on perspective will be lifted. Only then performance may have a chance at balancing the scales more equally.

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