Life can be unpredictable. Still, we all want and need some degree of stability with regard to the future. So we work together, we build relationships, we make commitments and we keep them. To the degree that we maintain fidelity with one another, we are all stronger. The key to planning a future together? We make promises and we depend on each other to be faithful to our words.
Promises are the stepping stones that we create for one another so that, one day at a time, we can navigate together those circumstances that would be vastly more treacherous were we each to strike out on our own. The more difficult the circumstance, the more essential it is that we can depend on one another.
Promises can be an inconvenience. (That's why they have to be made and kept.) In fact, there is no real virtue in 'keeping' a promise that isn't something of an inconvenience. That's what makes a promise different from a prediction.
