Commitment: The foundation of a sustainable business

The increase in the number of couples in the Philippines opting to live to together as common-law partners is disturbing for me. Statistics show that 15% of the population have chosen to live together and create their own families without the need of the legal binds of marriage. The more urban the setting, the more entries there are to co-habitation.

Is it the expense of the big city that makes people want to share homes, and eventually get entangled in a romantic or not-so-romantic relationship? Is the cost of getting married with all the obligatory invites, the reason? Is it the difference of religion that somehow holds the tying of the knot from happening? Or is it the fear of subsequent separation that makes couples hesitate in taking that final step of commitment?

In 2020, in spite of the pandemic, there was an increase of 1.5 million Filipino marriages, and subsequently although not necessarily related, the population also increased with many pandemic babies getting born. More daunting was the record of 400,000 individuals separating from their spouses either through annulment, divorce or legal separation.

The very core of our society is a stable home. I still would like to believe that. Stable relationships build more focused mindsets that lead to progress. Without the baggage of a dysfunctional home, an individual can have clearer pursuits and create happiness from his environs.

In an article in Business News Daily by Shayna Waltower, a universal reality of generating support from family and friends to push their business further is not only focused on the financial side of it. More often, the hardworking entrepreneur generates strength from the encouragement of family and friends. “Friends and family provide a support system to help business owners manage stress, maintain perspective and improve work-life balance even amid the chaos and crushing responsibility of founding and running a business,” the author declares. And this is not news. This is a fact.

Still we find more and more couples beginning their life together with the idea of separation. I say so because the lack of commitment to a relationship will eventually wear down and manifest on the morale of the other. In the pursuit of progress, somehow, the lack of commitment between couples may rob them of their initial desire to build stability in their life together.

I am reminded of the song by Neil Sedaka on the Hungry Years, where he reflects on how hard both he and his wife pursued their ambitions of wealth and how they eventually lost themselves in the process.

What are our reasons for living together? Is it just the sex? Is it the convenience of having someone to share the rent? Or someone who can prepare your meals and take care of you at the same time? Because of the ease on how people can share their bodies with each other, the repercussions invite more disease. Not just physically, but psychologically as well. As the rejected feels dejected after having “served a purpose”, and the other party moves on to another pursuit, piling on the lack of backbone to commit until both of them no longer know what life is really all about and end up in a pile of loneliness.

Business for me is stable when the family is stable. And it can only be centered on a commitment made with God.

I appreciate how some individuals who have come from broken families have strived to change their course by separating the chaff from the grain of their lives. Taking from experience the good that they could make out of a troubled childhood or past and making their own commitments to better their future. One has to self-commit or nothing will happen.

Everybody wants their business to be sustainable, and it can only be so if one anchors it on the principles of One who has been there from the beginning and can see you through until eternity. You do not need a life coach to make you see, that the very basic of all is to latch yourself on first, the commitment to live your life for God and the rest of the things you seek will be added unto you – for His glory, and for your joy, and peace.