Commitment and Companionship

Commitment and Companionship

A dictionary definition for both words comes up with the following;
Commitment: when you are willing to give your time and energy to something you believe in, or a promise or firm decision to do something.
There are other words used to describe commitment too; engagement, involvement, perpetration, confinement, consignment.
Companionship: the enjoyment of spending time with other people.
Other definitions include words such as fellowship, association, match, mate.
These are fairly bland definitions for two important words. Can you have companionship without some form of commitment? Can you have commitment without companionship in the human relations aspect of the word?
The Urban Dictionary offers other definitions.
Commitment:
Commitment is what
Transforms the promise into reality.
It is the words that speak
Boldly of your intentions.
And the actions which speak
Louder than the words.
It is making the time
When there is none.
Coming through time
After time after time,
Year after year after year.
Commitment is the stuff
Character is made of;
The power to change
The face of things.
It is the daily triumph
Of integrity over scepticism.
When I say I love you, I mean that I'm committed to working to love you even when it's hard.


Something men are frequently afraid of.
Proposal of this will most definently (sic) end a relationship.

Sticking with something long after the mood you have said it in has left you.
Companionship:
“when u meet a friend who isent a fcukin bitch and backstaber. Thats a one and a million shot.” (sic)

Clearly not a word that people have thought about very much, which is interesting in itself.

It’s election time in the UK, and there are people crawling out of the woodwork to promise this and assure us of that. There are white lies surfacing as quick as a priest’s erection at a football match. (Sorry for the offence, it was topical black humour that first sprang to mind for that simile.)
There is talk of commitment from all parties to ensure that the British public get what they deserve, what is best for them. There is companionship abound with partners supporting their spouses and sudden ‘best of friends’ between politicians on the same side who clearly cannot abide the sight of one another. It’s all so false and so far removed from what we need and what we are likely to get.

And then there are the pledges. Today, New Labour is launching their manifesto. Tomorrow it is the turn of the Tories and the day after that, the Liberals will explain what they would propose in the highly unlikely event that they will get to power, other than by means of a Lib Lab pact. Though each of these parties entice us with little snippets of what is going to be in the manifesto, ensuring that those of us who give a damn maintain just about enough interest to switch on for the launch.

This weekend, the Tories promised a marriage tax break that would amount to an additional £150 per annum as a reward for “commitment”.
There, they used the “C” word. Oh how I would love them to use the other “C” word in public. I actually think that if anyone was honest enough to turn round on television or in some quiet hustings and say “He’s talking bollocks and he’s a cunt”then they might just get my vote!

Cameron and his cronies have used this “commitment” word in a considered way. They have also recognised in their glorious political correctness to reward Civil Partnerships within this tax break. Apparently, “commitment” is some sort of means to greater stability in life. It suggests a society that is calm and compliant, that the commitment to another being is synonymous with a commitment to being a good person, a follower, a loyal servant. It shows determination and willing engagement.
The Tories say that this should be commended, and apparently that you can only prove a commitment by being married or being part of a civil partnership.
Interesting, eh!

It is such a shallow interpretation of the word, and that is before you get onto the Newspeak notions behind such a pledge. £150 isn’t exactly a lot of money. It is not going to be life changing, even for the most impoverished in our country. Sam and Courtney are not going to rush down to registry office for such a paltry amount of money. It would probably cost them about five times that much to get married in the first place.

What really riles me about this isn’t about the ‘reward’ for being committed, it is the suggestion that only these people can be committed, and by default, it is only these people who can be committed to anything.

I have friends that are not married, quite a few of them actually. Some of them are committed to bachelordom, some are committed to their work, and others are committed to having a fucking good time, knobbing anything in trousers, preferably with their hands tied behind their back. Others are committed to making the world a better place. I’ve known people who have been in deeply committed relationships; monogamous to the last, only the commitment hasn’t lasted a lifetime. They’ve had a series of committed relationships, goof, honest, loving, caring, committed relationships.
I’m actually quite committed to my lover. Does that mean that I should get a doubling of the £150 if I can prove in some way that I am committed to him as well?
There are people I know who have lived together for years and have no intention of getting married. Are they less committed than the couple who have been married for five years and have never had a week without argument, disagreement and continue to have a complete lack of concern for their spouse?

You cannot go around using such words with such flippant disregard for their meaning. I know that some might say that I am being pedantic but I don’t think I am.
Language is so vital and believe me, the Tories HQ would not have allowed that word to be used without considering it very carefully.

There is also the complacent belief that once someone has made a commitment in marriage or in civil partnership that this is the end deal. Has Cameron considered that? Is “commitment” the be all and end all of life”? What does commitment actually prove? How committed is committed or is commitment, as interpreted here, merely a societal conformity. What he is actually saying is that he wants to reward people for committing to “normality”.

Companionship, on the other hand, is something else. In companionship, I feel that there is a commitment that goes beyond the signing of papers or the overt demonstration of togetherness. If Cameron really wants to reward something that would actually make a difference to society, he should look at people who have the ability to be good companions, those who are “committed” to the wellbeing of others and show how they can empathise and understand the needs of others as well as themselves.

Cameron should look for the joy and the bliss of positive friendship as a means of stability. Here’s a vote winner – perhaps he should look at the number of “friends” people have on Facebook or the number of Twitter followers people have, and give them a tax break as this could be a sign of someone who is a good companion, who is interested in other people.

Of course, I am clearly talking bollocks. The number of friends of Facebook is probably more indicative of someone who is far from being a companion! It is probably a sign of an egotistical maniac who spends so long accruing friends on Facebook that they never actually leave the house to have a proper, collegiate conversation with another human being, or that the links with their so-called friends are so tenuous that they probably met some of them on a bus one day in 1989 in Swindon as they were passing through.
The point is that you cannot possibly measure companionship just as I am convinced that you cannot determine commitment in this crude and unfortunate way.

True commitment and real companionship defies the restrictions of definition and therefore it should not even be considered as something that can determine a tax break. It is as shallow as the people who suggest it in the first place.
Commitment cannot be measured by whether someone has a marriage certificate. Looking too deeply into the meaning of companionship is full of flaws too, if put into this sort of context.

Why is Zenpuss writing about such things?
Because they are important!
Sexual enlightenment is partly to do with freeing the mind. Part of sexual enlightenment is about enabling someone to acknowledge their true sexual self, and in order to do this, I do think it is important to look at language, to interpret and often re-interpret these words and to consider the significance of such words in their lives.

If you are to be truly enlightened, you have to consider what societal values are being pushed on you. I’ll get my money from Cameron if he is elected but it doesn’t mean that I am more committed to one relationship than another. It doesn’t mean that I am compliant and that I am going to conform to a certain way of living. My own sexual enlightenment has carried me some distance along the path, and for all the money that Cameron can throw my way, I cannot go against the real me any longer and just comply to a certain, fixed and stereotypical way of living.