The Invention Of The Promise

As human beings -sometimes we forget that we invented promises. Here's a myth about how promises were invented by humans...

A long time ago in the days of cavemen there was a big caveman dude named Olek and a little caveman dude named Mo. They both lived in the same cave in a heavily wooded area. Probably situated somewhere in South America where its warm and stuff.

Anyways, back in those days you needed fire to survive. Fire was a precious resource. The tribes stayed warm, cooked their food, and melted metal with the fire.

But -In order to have fire one needed to continuously provide wood so the fire could burn continuously.

Because Olek was the larger caveman he would boss around Mo (naturally).

Mo was basically a wimp so if he didn’t do what Olek said -Olek would bonk him on the head really hard with a small log (Olek was strong).

So, whenever the fire got low Olek would say to Mo “Oo, og, og” Which meant “get some wood and put it on the fire.”

Then Mo would walk over a few feet, snap off a tree branch and throw it on the fire or he would cut down the tree with his saw he had just invented, and drag the log over to the fire and put wood on the fire. Mo invents things and is really smart while Olek is a jock.

Every day the same scenario would play out. Olek would say “Oo, og, og” and Mo would go and get wood and put it on the fire.

As you can imagine, as time went on all of the resources around Olek and Mo began to get used up until one day Olek said “Oo, og, og” and Mo had to say “Ma, goo, gog” Which means “one moon.” Olek was not happy about it because Mo told him that it would take him one whole moon to get more resources. Thus a promise was born. Mo had to make a promise to Olek to get more wood for the fire.

After one moon Mo came back with the resources until one day he never came back because he met a beautiful cavewoman and went in to mate with her and started a family and Olek was left on his own to fetch his own resources. The end.

The point...

Every promise you and I make takes time. You can not make a promise without a time component attached to it.

If you can fulfill a request immediately then it is not a promise. A promise by it’s very definition means it will take time.

Like Mo, there are tasks that you and I must do each day to bring about the fulfillment of what we want to accomplish. In Olek and Mo’s case it was having their fire continuously burning. With us it might be getting a project completed or administration done in our business.

Because each promise carries with it a factor of time… if we are not managing our promises effectively then we run into breakdowns.