Each and every day, people make promises one to another, some are personal, some are professional, and some are coerced. Those that make promises, have different intents, depending upon the circumstances so of; in which, some promises made by the person so promising, they have absolutely no intent on keeping, but they make the promise anyway, typically, simply to buy the peace, for at least some period of time. Then there are those promises that some people are pressured into making, though having no real intention or any real commitment to make good on the promise, but simply agreeing to such, as simply being the cost of doing business on that day. Finally, there are real promises so made of which the person making that promise has done so voluntarily with aforethought and with the real intent of keeping that promise. Those then, are the types of promises that are the truly the ones that count in regards to a given person’s true character.
The thing about promises so being made, is that most of time, even almost all of the time, many promises are pretty easy to keep, mainly because nothing of conflict or of true testing ever comes into play, so until the time that actually occurs, pretty much everything is just fine. Alas, life is full of tests, of which, some of those tests are going to be tough, and it is in those tough tests, that determines the integrity or lack thereof of the person so involved. So then, an intentional promise made is supposed to be a promise kept, and those that are unable to keep their promises, have failed the test; though, of course, there may well be mitigating circumstances, excuses, and all sorts of reasons why; some legit, some not, but still, when it is all said and done, that promise has been broken.
While there are myriad reasons why promises are broken, the two biggest reasons why promises are typically broken are first of all, because some people are just too weak to keep their promises, and then when push comes to shove, they will not even admit to breaking their promises, for they know that they can’t handle the shame, the embarrassment, or the lost of face, if they do so admit, so they end up lying and don’t own up to it, hoping to never to be found out, though, most times they do get found out. The other main type of promise that is broken, is when it is to the promise-breaker’s immense advantage to break the promise, because something that they value more, or think they value more, is right there in front of them, and they will not let go of that opportunity, come what may, so the breaking of the promise so made apparently represents no meaningful value to them.
When it comes to promises, one must give credit to where credit is due, and for all those good people that keep their promises through thick and thin, they are of sound and good character, especially those so taken to the absolute testing limit of a given promise, perhaps even more than once, and yet they did not give in to that temptation, no matter how alluring, for they would not break that promise; so then, these fine individuals have run their race well -- it is therefore these few that deserve our credit and our accolades, for they truly have kept their promise, which means that they have successfully kept their word.