I came across this speech made by David Foster Wallace at a Kenyon College commencement.  True, true.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull- sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

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Brilliant statements.  Now need I be concerned that I resonate with this so powerfully?  He did after all hang himself.  Just kidding…er, sort of.

I am always impressed to see the flavor a word or behavior takes on for folks walking through the journey of their life.  With so many ideals and programming from our child hood it’s interesting to see how we each respond to certain situations.  I am constantly in a state of growth and am committed to learning more about who I am at my core in every moment.  I pay attention to internal reactions I have to sounds, thoughts, lectures, emails, texts…pretty much all forms of communication.  My end state goal is through my commitment to offer myself the choice on how I want to move forward in that moment to serve myself and others.  Especially with love in mind.  Here are a few other flavors of commitment from my friend Wiki in case you want to see how it can be addressed in your life and relationships as it relates to your word:

Look up commitment inWiktionary, the free dictionary.

Commitment means to show loyalty, duty or pledge to something or someone, and can refer to:

• Personal commitment, interaction dominated by obligations. These obligations may be mutual, or self-imposed, or explicitly stated, or may not. Distinction is often made between commitment as a member of an organization (such as a sporting team, a religion, or as an employee), and a personal commitment, which is often a pledge or promise to ones’ self for personal growth.
• Brand commitment refers to the strength of the relationship between consumers (or customers) and a particular brand (or service).
• Involuntary commitment, the practice of using legal means or forms to commit a person to a mental hospital, insane asylum or psychiatric ward against the will or over the protests of that person.
• Ontological commitment, belief in an ontology in philosophy.
• Cell commitment, the molecular event that leads to cellular differentiation.
• Organizational commitment can mean something pledged by an organization as opposed to its members.
• Commitment (computer science) – the concept of commitment is studied in several branches of computer science around the notion of something pledged.

• Physical commitment is information pledged about physical systems (that are situated at a particular place and time).
• Social commitment, in PIG a multi-agent system a directed obligation from one agent to another to perform certain actions so as to bring about a certain state of affairs.
• Commitment scheme, in cryptography
• Commit (data management), to make changes permanent in data management. For example, COMMIT is a statement in SQL. The opposite is to rollback (data management).

Elevating to new realms of consciousness

Xperiencing your truth on a vibrating soulular level

Playing full out with RECKLESS ABANDON and uncontrollable joy

Answering the questions without once consulting your mind

Nurturing that part of you you thought you left behind

Surpassing your wildest dreams and unspeakable fantasies

In love with opportunity to laugh, fall down, rise, fly, float, breath, surrender

Open. Vulnerable. Honest. Whole.

No regrets…