Toko-pa Turner Also Knows.

Toko-pa Turner is an author, poet, dreamworker and bestselling author of one of my favourite books, “Belonging” toko-pa.com

"When we hear the word commitment, most of us think of obligation and restriction. So we may avoid making commitments. Or we keep them ‘soft,’ in the event that something shinier comes along.
We change careers an average of 7 times in adulthood, half of all marriages end in divorce, we communicate in the undemanding ways of text messages and emoticons, infinitely scrolling, rarely giving the fullness of our presence to anything. And by extension, we are growing to expect that life should be immediate and convenient.

But what if convenience is really a sham? It proposes to make your life easier, but there are often hidden tolls being taken elsewhere. Easy puts work into robotic hands, undermining our own necessity. Easy destroys the mentoring relationship. Easy robs us of the privilege of courtship, the very thing which bonds us to a place and its resources, or a craft and the people who’ve made a slow mastery of their lives.

In alchemy, one of the key conditions necessary to the transformative process was a sealed vessel which could withstand the pressure necessary to synthesise base elements into gold. I’d like to propose that commitment is that container. Like the alchemical crucible, commitment is the vessel in which something raw and undisciplined can be transformed into beauty.

It is hermetically sealed so that nothing extraneous can enter into the process. No projections can be made upon it, no introduced doubt or criticism can reach it during its critical formative stages. But it’s also sealed for our own good, so that we don’t have an easy out. This is what’s meant by ‘holding the tension.’ So in times of exhaustion and suffering, fear and frustration, we remain committed long enough for the process to complete itself.

So when we place limitations and boundaries around something we care about, it isn’t meant to be a prison which keeps us stuck or stagnant, but rather to create a paradoxical freedom which allows us, through restraint, to fully explore the relationship, the craft, or the experience in all its dimensions. Commitment in these terms is not an obligation but a deep devotion to that which you love.” 

- Toko-pa Turner