Devotion And Commitment Essay, Research Paper

Devotion and Commitment

When a lover gives oneself to another, is it devotion or commitment? It is difficult to say because it would depend on what type of relationship the two have with each other. Ideal love should be based on devotion because it is in a sense that devotion is unconditional and flexible. Commitment seems to be more like something that you have to agree to or given to, mercy. It also appears to be something that one would have to teach oneself to know.

Commitment shouldn’t be something that should be practiced in a relationship. Commitment is different from devotion because of how it is similar to when a person signs a contract. The person is now constrained to a certain set of rules and obligations the person must fulfill. Whereas devotion has no pathway, it may go wherever love leads it. Commitment is more work than it is play. One has to discipline oneself and have the willpower to complete a desired goal. Practicing commitment in a relationship is not ideal because love isn’t needed in this type of relationship. It is simply implying that a person needs willpower to stay with his or her partner. Or it can be seen as a person having an obligation to staying with that partner due to some circumstance. Commitment is okay in a relationship if devotion is present.

Since commitment stems from work, devotion must come from play. Although commitment is associated with work, devotion may also be linked to work. One can easily be devoted to his or her work. It implies that the person is truly in love with the job. If you were to observe all people to see who had the purest form of devotion, you could see that children had it. Children live with no sense of time and from this time, exists a sense that one who lives in timelessness can live happily. In timelessness, there are no worries. When two partners are devoted to one another they are truly in love. There is no sense of time and they experience a euphoria that is unexplainable. The devotion is unconditional and the two partners are committed to one another in the same sense.

Commitment can exist in a relationship. Two partners may be obligated to one another and no one else. Its not until later in the relationship, assuming there is a displacement between the two, which commitment comes into the picture. When this happens, things begin to change. The two are not as devoted in the relationship as they used to be. There is also a lack of love because there has been a decrease in the desires that the two have and fulfill when they are together.

Both commitment and devotion can exist in a relationship. However the two must be balanced in order for the relationship to work. At work, I was at one time both devoted and committed to what I was doing. I loved my job and saw the things I was asked to do as my duty. I felt that I had an obligation from the day I was asked to take the job to perform certain tasks. I was committed to fulfilling these obligations and I had fun while I was doing it. This was when I began to really love what I was doing. When bad things began to happen such as managers who lacked skills to fairly and properly treat their works, I began to lose my desire to give 100% devotion into my job. Eventually I lost all of my devotion and all of my love for my job. What still existed was the commitment. I still felt like I had an obligation I had to fulfill, a duty to perform, every time I set foot at my work. Without devotion, it has been extremely unpleasant doing the things I used to enjoy. This shows that devotion is the most important factor in love.