A few weeks ago, a colleague told me that she would meet me at a particular time and place. I waited, but she did not come. At one time or another, we have all had someone say that they will do something, only to let us down. It usually happens when repairs are urgently needed, and plumbers and electrician do not turn up. Somehow, I expected a fellow teacher to keep her word.
Literature has many examples of those who value their words. In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, the beautiful and wealthy Portia assures her father that in accordance with his injunction, she will marry the man who selects a casket that contains her picture. Although her father is no longer alive, and she is unhappy to be ‘curbed’, she does not contravene his command. Tempted to help Bassanio, whom she loves, to choose correctly, Portia says that she will ‘never be forsworn’.
In the familiar fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast, Beauty makes sure that her father keeps his word. Beauty’s father has plucked a rose and the angry Beast says that he must return with the first living thing that he sees on reaching home. The hapless man agrees. Beauty, who rushes out to greet her father, sets off to befriend the Beast. As a child, I remember thinking Beauty both courageous and crazy. She could have stayed safe, taking care not to cross the fearsome creature’s path. I quite missed the point, which is that one should keep one’s word, regardless of the consequences. Years later, I read an English translation of Valmiki’s Ramayana by Ralph T H Griffith. In that great epic, on a lofty, spiritual plane, we see respect for the royal word. Amid preparations for the coronation of Prince Rama, Queen Kaikeyi reminds King Dasaratha of two boons he had granted her. She demands that her son Bharata be crowned the king and that Rama leave Ayodhya. Rama unhesitatingly honours his father’s commitment. ‘No grief the noble youth displayed,’ writes Griffith. He goes on to quote Rama’s words to Kaikeyi: ‘Yea, for my father’s promise sake / I to the wood my way shall take / And dwell a lonely exile there / In hermit dress with matted hair.’ Our everyday undertakings are unlikely to entail sacrifices, so it should not be too hard to follow through on them. Let us walk our talk!