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Lauren Burgess

Tamara Davis

Composition II

8 February 2024

A New Era of Commitment

Go back and think about the last month, how many open-ended promises were made?

Maybe telling a friend that you would go to lunch with them and then didn’t follow up to

schedule a time? Maybe telling your roommate that you would do the dishes in the sink and

forgot to do them. Or possibly promising mom you would call your grandmother and never did.

In Alex Sheen’s TEDx Talk “Because I Said I Would”, he talks about just that. Keeping

promises and following through for the people that you are promising to (Sheen). I make

promises to myself and to others every day and keeping my word isn’t the hard part, caring

enough to follow through is.

Promises are a mind-boggling thing. Why is it that we use promises as a spoken form of

trust? I for one feel more at ease when someone tells me “I promise.” What is it about that word

that makes us truly feel as if the person is one hundred percent going to follow through? I tend to

promise things that I know I will never do just to get someone to leave me alone. Alex Sheen

talks about how his journey starts with his father passing away and wanting to stand in his

father’s memory. He hands out cards that read “because I said I would “. His idea is that you will

write you’re your promise on the card and give it to someone who you are making this promise

to (Sheen). Everyone likes to think that they will follow through with the things that they say.

Although, I would like to think that I will go ahead and do what I have promised, I hardly ever
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do. Just yesterday I promised my dog I would take her on a walk. Did I? No. I also promise

myself just about every night before I go to bed that when I wake up, I will go to the gym in the

morning when I wake up. Spoiler alert, I never do. I am incredibly guilty of doing this, but not

just to my dog. I do it to friends, parents, myself, etc. Will there ever come a time that I will stop

making promises if I know in my soul that I will not follow through? When I truly think about it

and am honest with myself there is a reason why there promises never to get fulfilled. It all boils

down to caring enough and prioritizing the things that are the most important.

A couple years ago, I was going through an incredibly tough time mentally with myself.

During this time, I was enrolled in college at Oklahoma State and while going to school I

managed to get myself into a heavy mental struggle. While fighting this struggle with myself, I

let my education fall to the bottom of my list. As you can imagine, it did not take long until I was

failing almost all my classes. I ended up withdrawing from school and did not attend any classes

for almost two years, because I felt defeated with no end in sight. When it felt like I was failing

in another part of my life, I didn’t know if there was any way for me to get out of this dark place

that I seemed to be in. All my life I had excelled in school, so when something else that always

provided me, reassurance was no longer there, I had felt even more lost than before. I ended up

getting a full-time job at a hospital and found out that I really enjoyed interacting and helping

people. I worked this job for about two years, and eventually I decided that I wanted to pursue

this newfound passion of mine even further. I ended up enrolling back into school and I am

taking classes full time again. When I decided to go in this direction, I had made a huge promise

to myself. Sheen asks us “Is it the card that gives us the strength to move on, to get better, to do

what’s right? Or was the strength always with us?” (Sheen). This quote made me realizes that

everyone has strength within them, it took a bigger event for me to realize how strong I really
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am. I told myself that no matter how hard things got, I would continue down this education path.

I told myself that I was truly committed to bettering myself and my education.

No matter what you do, you are always influencing someone. Alex Sheen started his

“because I said I would” movement to make his father’s memory live on, and in the process, he

ended up helping so many others with just a piece of paper (Sheen). No matter how big or how

small what you’re doing is. Someone else is always watching you and someone else’s decisions

could possibly be affected by what you do. I participate in class, I talk to others, because

someone else could be scared to do those things, and it could take seeing me do those things to

give someone a leap of faith that they needed. I’ve taken going back to school so seriously,

because there could be someone else that was in the same position as me and they could be

scared to take the jump. I truly wish there could’ve been someone to do that for me. This

commitment that I’ve made to myself is so important because it reminds me every single day not

to give up and to keep pushing myself. I want to be able to push the people around me to be

better humans, and I can’t do that unless I’m the best version of myself that I can be.

Open-ended commitments and promises are out forever. The commitment I have made to

myself will be acted upon and will be completed, because I believe in myself and my abilities.

This promise is so import to me so that I can show myself how far I have come and how much I

am capable of accomplishing. This is one promise that I can promise myself will not be open-

ended.
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Works Cited

Sheen, Alex. “Because I Said I Would.” TEDx Talks, 8 November 2013,

https://www.youtube.com/. 1 February 2024.

“Because I Said I Would is a powerful movement that Alex Sheen started after the

passing of his father, as his father always was a man of his word. Sheen uses his notecards that

read “Because I Said I Would” to move people to keep their promises. These notecards spread to

all over the world with the hopes of everyone keeping their word. This video will tag along with

my essay as I go into the promises, I have made to myself and others.