A promise made is a debt unpaid

I believe in keeping promises.

I always believed in keeping true to your word and accomplishing goals you create. When my dad was younger, he set drastic goals that he would always accomplish, because for some reason the word “can’t” didn’t exist in his dictionary. I believe his ideology has rubbed on me. When I was younger I used to play soccer, and I promised my dad that I would be a great player. His only words to me were “don’t ever break a promise” and I crossed pinkies with him and we smiled.

I would practice every day until I got injured and left the sport for quite some time and turned chubby, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I became ashamed of who I was. I knew my father loved me, but I promised him something that I never completed. Those two pinkies intertwining meant the whole world more than what most people would even care for, but as his son that promise meant something much more.

As a kid I began playing soccer again and joined track, became someone more; surpassed my expectation. When a family reunion came we decided to have soccer as one of our activities and I remember so clearly that I crossed my father and made the last goal before everyone went to eat. Although that game meant nothing to the rest of the family, my father came up to me and smiled. He told me I was a pretty good player and patted me on the head; the feeling I got was more than any trophy or any form of physical recognition I could have ever received.

Ever since that day I started setting goals for myself, promising myself that I would not stop until I complete them. I promised myself to pick up volleyball, because my baby cousin needed someone to play with and I joined my highschool team and did that as well as soccer for 2-3 years. Took up boxing for four years; grappling for two, because I was under the belief I needed to keep my mother safe as a teenager and promised her that I would always protect her.

The power of staying true to your word and never letting down no matter what others say is power that truly should be reckoned with. People will put you down and belittle your goals of how they are, only because they themselves can’t do it. They can’t see themselves putting that much effort in keeping a promise, completing a goal, an ideology that was passed on by a great man. Now when I look at my father I feel that he is somewhat proud of me. He was never a man to baby you, but I guess this way of life I live now somehow started when a little kid crossed pinkies with a mammoth of a man in his little eyes to keep a promise, to set a standard.