We've all seen the commercial with the couple in bed separated by their lawyers. The point to the commercial is that whatever wireless company it is won't screw you over with contracts. I'm not going to get into how reading and clarifying a contract is your responsibility before you sign them today. (Even if it's something that drives me crazy, but still, I'm saving that for another day.)
Contracts used to be the way to force someone to keep their word legally, because you didn't trust them or because you couldn't be sure that their word would be kept in their absence of presence. And sometimes it was just to make sure that someone wasn't being slick with their word choice. They were just meant to be a binding legal document that showed each party AGREED to something.
I don't know where that started to change and when people started using contracts in just a malevolent manner. I'm not talking about people being stupid about signing things and not reading them and clarifying where they don't understand.
But contracts themselves are becoming more and more tricky to follow, and in a way they're forcing a lack of trust amongst ourselves. Even worse is when the agreement isn't followed through. If you can't agree to something on principle, then why would you agree to it? But this inability to be reliable when it comes to things that can be proven (i.e. legal contracts) is just another way of our unreliability as people manifesting.
Long gone are the days where a man's word was what he was worth, and for some reason just being able to say something even if you are completely aware that there is no way you can follow through is acceptable. Networking is such a great art now, even more than ever, because it comes down to finding the persons to connect with that will follow through with everything they say. Even worse is when we look to people around us, our family and friends that support us, and having them flake out on us. It's probably the number one pet peeve of most Americans and the biggest relationship-ender in the books aside from dishonesty and mistrust.
I'd really love to see us go back to a time when your word was everything, and you did your best to follow through with what you could. Reliability is something that we can't take for granted anymore, and we should be able to take each other at face value instead of putting everyone through tests and trials. If we all take one day to make a list of all the things we've ever promised and go through that list to finish the things we gave our word we would do, the world would function in a much more efficient manner. I'm tired of seeing people being disappointed because a persons word has to be tested, and it pains me to know that for every one person that manages to succeed a million more are disappointing. Following through has never been so important, and if we start small we can work big. Now is the time for us to start changing, because we've all seen how difficult life has become as a result of our current decline. Something to think about, how are you going to follow through with one thing today?
Love, Polly.
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