Reliability

Reli­a­bility is a virtue. Being reliable is some­thing I strive for. I am for the most part that one person you can always rely on. If I say I will do some­thing, it will be done. I’m like a hammer: I’ll always be sitting in the toolbox, and when you’re ready to hammer some­thing, you know where I am, and you know that I’ll work.

I highly value reli­a­bility. And I find that it is some­thing that is sorely missing from most people nowadays. What ever happened to keeping your word? What ever happened to keeping your promises? It is one of the biggest pet peeves I have. Scratch that, it’s not a pet peeve; it’s entirely unac­ceptable to me. When someone says that they will do some­thing, I expect them to stick to their commitment. Of course, most people don’t, and I usually take people’s promises with a grain of salt. Even so, people never cease to disap­point me.

I under­stand that things do happen and every­thing, but it is common courtesy to apol­ogize and notify the person to whom you made a commitment to (no matter how trivial) if you cannot do as you promised. It’s about respect and consci­en­tiousness. It’s amazing how many fully grown adults don’t under­stand this basic value.

I’m not perfect…there have been times when some­thing completely slipped my mind. But I always apol­ogize and I always make that effort to be reliable. That’s far more than can be said for the vast majority of people nowadays. And it’s a real shame. I have no clue what it really was like “back then”, when “good old American values” were still all the rage. Perhaps it never was like that at all. It doesn’t matter though. I just hope that I will someday raise my kids to recognize the value of reliability.

P.S. I may have written about this before…which just goes to show you how often this matter bothers me.