Why is commitment necessary to change? Because change happens slow, not fast. Everything that matters takes time—there are no shortcuts. Teaching a student, advancing a cause, healing a divide, rectifying an injustice, revitalizing a town, solving a hard problem, getting a new project off the ground—they all take time. If change happened quickly, we wouldn’t need commitment—our initial elation or anger would be enough. But when change takes time, we need something more—something that can get us through the boredom, distraction, exhaustion, and uncertainty that can plague any long-haul effort.
Commitment is also necessary to change because making change often looks less like designing and executing a battle plan and more like cultivating and maintaining a relationship. It is more organic than it is mechanical, more improvised than it is engineered. There are some processes we can’t “foolproof,” “scale,” or “automate.” Humans—and human institutions—are too complicated and varied to do so completely. The only way we can change institutions, communities, and people is by entering into relationships with them—by learning their nuances, by building a rapport, by having enough trust and flow to respond nimbly to unexpected circumstances. That’s why the best teachers are not the ones who have mastered the textbook—they’re the ones who have the deepest relationships with their students. It’s why the best mayors are not the smartest but the ones most faithfully committed to their city.
In his final book, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected: “The line of progress is never straight. For a period a movement may follow a straight line and then it encounters obstacles and the path bends. It is like curving around a mountain when you are approaching a city. Often it feels as though you were moving backward, and you lose sight of your goal; but in fact you are moving ahead, and soon you will see the city again, closer by.”
Indeed, what is static in successful movements is not the battle plan but the commitment to the movement’s vision and values. The sociologist Daniel Bell had a similar insight about belief. He wrote, “Gadgets can be engineered, programs can be designed… but belief has an organic quality, and it cannot be called into being by fiat. Once a faith is shattered, it takes a long time to grow again—for its soil is experience.” Again, change needs dedicated gardeners, not just clever engineers.