The two pictures above have absolutely nothing with what’s about to follow. But tonight I found myself missing my grandmother and my father, and I stumbled upon these pictures from ten years ago. A bit later, I sat down and wrote what you are about to read.

I’m a bit old-fashioned when it comes to promises. I take promises a tad seriously. In my world, a man who can’t keep a promise is not a man. Same thing applies to women, but ‘a person who can’t keep a promise is not a person’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, so cut me some slack here. Back to my point, everything can and will be taken away from you eventually. Your ability to keep your word is one of the only things that’s truly yours—maybe the only one you can take to the grave.

You promise something and you keep it. No ifs or buts. No exceptions. No excuses. It’s really simple. You don’t need to be a genius to pull this off. You just need an unyielding commitment to never betray the trust of those who give it to you. All you have to do is never promise what you are not 110% sure that you’ll be able to keep. Your integrity, your dignity as a human being, your honor are tied to this one decision.

I don’t see a way to make up for compromising something as sacred as your word. If you break it, an apology means nothing, since we have already established that your word is a flag in the wind. The only response I take seriously when someone breaks a promise is if they grab a sharp blade, unsheathe it, shove it in their stomach and then cut from side to side. Ritual self-disembowelment doesn’t undo the damage done when a promise was broken, but at least it indicates the apology was sincere.

P.S. if the above is more graphic than you cared to read today, please consider I spend my days researching stories packed with human beings doing horrible things to one another, so at times blood and gore have a tendency to linger in my thoughts. I’ll try to focus more on puppies and flowers in the future.