An elephants faithful, one hundred percent.

   I read 'Horton Hatches an Egg' today while babysitting. Its a cute story about an elephant who gets stuck in a promise to sit on a birds egg for a moment. Horton takes care of the egg for 30ish months, keeping his promise longer than expected, and eventually hatches the egg. and the whole time when he could give up caring for the abandoned egg he says basically that he is going to keep his word and care for the egg.
          and I got thinking about promises. People don't take them very seriously. People promise to keep secrets and they run off and tell the first person they see. People promise to be there but "something came up" and they bail. People promise to do chores or homework or anything really, but "they forget" or "their computer crashed" or "they just can't". When you watch children make promises you watch them pinky swear, or double swear, double dog promise (thats the big leagues right there). They try to establish trust and explain the importance of what they are saying. They know that not everyone keeps their promises. They already know not to trust everyone.
       I think that's a pivotal problem in our society. If everyone grew up knowing that promises or even just someone's word will be kept then everyone would trust a little more. If everyone kept their word, there would be a lot less hurt people out there. Employees would be more efficient, employers more trustworthy. Siblings would be better friends. Friends would be more reliable. Parents would be super heroes again. Relationships wouldn't die so easily. The concept of a promise needs to be rethought and retaught. We need to teach each other how to keep a promise by keeping every promise we make. Everyone has that responsibility. But I think parents play a huge role. If parents show their kids how to always keep a promise then children will grow up learning it. And then the children will grow up keeping their word and being more trusting.And maybe this means making fewer promises.
    That reminds me of a lesson I was taught at college group about the word 'love' and what it really means and how we use it. the word 'promise' needs to be used more carefully too. but the words 'love' and 'promise' are kind of the same. Because when you love someone you promise to deal with all their baggage and care about them and love them forever. And you would never want to break a promise to someone you love. In the message we learned about truly understanding love before committing to someone and before professing love to one another. And I think one step further is remembering the promises of love in the long run. At a wedding the bride and groom even say that they promise to be together forever. They, not only, say they love each other and promise everything that love entails but they promise to commit and love forever. People need to relearn that. People get divorced because they forget their promises to each other.
     Thats why I thought of this whole post. Because I watched a movie where a couple got divorced and the husband said "but you promised; for better or for worse." and the wife didn't even care what she promised. But what is she took promises seriously and made that her last reason to stay? We grow up knowing not to trust people and accepting that promises don't have to be kept. But what if we grew up in a world where any promise was like a 6 year old's "double dog promise." People would be more careful of what we promise. People wouldn't be hurt so much by broken promises. I think we all need to stop promising so many things that we can't do. we should write down every promise we make so we can take it seriously. especially for children.
              And I don't think we should make any promise unless we are willing to lock pinkies on it. or even *gasp* spit in our palms and shake on it. risking spity hands would certainly make us think about what we are doing before we promise anything big. or maybe we should be a little more like Horton the elephant. We should all sit on eggs in trees in the snow and rain, to hatch a half elephant, half bird baby. Or maybe not. but maybe regardless of what we get stuck promising we should live by Horton's famous quote "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, and elephants faithful, one hundred percent." But, you know, make that about humans.