in the most secret chamber of the heart began to tremble fiercely so that I felt its agony in the least pulsation, and, then, trembling, it said to me: “Behold a god more powerful than I, who, coming, will rule over me.” At that moment, my natural spirit, that which lives in the high chamber to which all the spirits of the senses carry their perceptions, began to marvel deeply, and speaking especially to the spirit of sight, spoke these words: “Now your blessedness appears.” At that moment the natural spirit, which dwells in the place where all our nourishment is brought, began to weep, and weeping said these words: “Oh misery, how often will I be troubled from this time on!”
Dante saw and was conquered, and knew instantaneously what trouble this new ruling passion would cause him. But he loved on nonetheless. And this can happen with the love of a person, but also with the love of a political cause or an idea or a God. The love will change everything in unexpected and inconvenient ways.
Once the heart has fallen in love and has acknowledged that love, then the soul feels a powerful urge to make a promise to it. Once love strikes, there is an urge to say, “I will always love you.” That’s because the very essence of love is dedication. As Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand once wrote, “A man who would say: ‘I love you now, but how long it will last I cannot tell,’ does not truly love; he does not even suspect the very nature of love. Faithfulness is so essentially one with love, that everyone, at least as long as he loves, must consider his devotion an undying devotion. This holds good for every love, for parental love and filial love, for friendship and for spousal love. The deeper a love, the more it is pervaded by fidelity.”
A commitment is a promise made from love. A commitment is making a promise to something without expecting a return—out of sheer lovingness. There may be a psychic return on a good marriage, or from a commitment to a political cause, or from making music, but that is not why one makes it or why one does it. If a couple is actually in love, and you pull them aside and tell them that this love probably doesn’t make sense and they should forsake it, you will almost certainly not persuade them. They’d rather be in turmoil with each other than in tranquility alone.
There is something that feels almost involuntary about a deep commitment. It happens when some person or cause or field of research has become part of your very identity. You have reached the point of the double negative. “I can’t not do this.” Somewhere along the way you realized, I’m a musician. I’m a Jew. I’m a scientist. I’m a Marine. I’m an American. I love her. I am his beloved.
In this way, a commitment is different from a contract. A person making a contract is weighing pros and cons. A person entering into a contract doesn’t really change. She just finds some arrangement that will suit her current interests. A commitment, on the other hand, changes who you are, or rather embeds who you are into a new relationship. You are not just man or woman. You are husband and wife. You are not just an adult; you are a teacher or a nurse. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks clarifies the difference: “A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an ‘us.’ That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.”
A committed person is giving her word and placing a piece of herself in another person’s keeping. The word “commitment” derives from the Latin mittere, which means “to send.” She is sending herself out and giving another person a claim. She is creating a higher entity. When you enter a marriage, your property is still yours, but it is no longer only yours. It belongs to your spouse, too, or, more properly, it belongs to the union you have both created—this new higher-level thing.
This fervent, love-drenched, identity-changing definition of a commitment is true, but not the whole truth. A commitment isn’t just love and a promise, of course. It is love and promise put under law. In living out a commitment, each party