For most of my life, I believed I had a commitment problem.
I was the person who dreamed big, and the person who could see something before it existed.
When I couldn’t run two kilometres, I imagined leading a run club. When I wasn’t even an instructor, I imagined teaching classes with waitlists. When I worked at the front desk, I imagined becoming the manager. When I had nothing more than an idea, I imagined building something that mattered.
And somehow, more often than not, those things happened.
I became the lead instructor. I became the manager. I ran the marathon. I started the run club.
I built the thing I once only imagined. But eventually, I left. For years, I judged myself for that. I wondered if I lacked discipline, if I was addicted to novelty or if I simply couldn’t commit.
Because isn’t commitment supposed to mean staying? Isn’t that what we’ve been taught?
Stay in the relationship. Stay with the career. Stay passionate. Stay inspired.
Stay.
So every time I felt myself drifting after reaching a goal, I quietly wondered what was wrong with me.
Why couldn’t I just be content?
I’ve been thinking a lot about roots lately. Not because I feel rootless but ironically, because I have planted so many. Regardless, every chapter of my life has felt genuine. When I became an instructor, I wasn’t pretending. I loved it. I poured everything into it. I studied. I improved. I obsessed over every playlist, every cue, every class. I wanted people to leave feeling stronger than when they walked in.
I wanted to become exceptional.
So I did.
The classes became full with over 20 people on a waitlist. It didn’t matter if I taught 1 class or four back-to-back, they were all waitlisted.
People waited for a spot. I built a team. Eventually I became a lead instructor. But then, something inside me became quiet. Not because I hated teaching; because the climb was over.
The same thing happened at work. I didn’t take a front desk position because I wanted to stay behind a desk forever. I wanted to learn. I wanted responsibility. I wanted to grow. Eventually I became the manager. And once I felt I had become the person I hoped to become, the restlessness returned.
Then there was running. Running might be the clearest example of all. I still remember struggling through those first kilometres. Wondering how people ever ran ten. Wondering how marathons were even humanly possible. Yet somewhere inside me, long before my body could do it, was able to picture it.
I pictured a marathon. I pictured a run club.
People probably would’ve laughed if they knew what I was imagining while I struggled to finish two kilometres. But those images carried me. Not long after, the marathon happened. The run club happened. And then, running faded. Not forever, but enough to make me question whether I had ever really loved it at all.
For a long time I thought that made me inconsistent. Now I think I was asking the wrong question. Maybe I don’t have trouble committing. Maybe I have become incredibly good at becoming. There’s a difference.
Becoming is intoxicating; everything feels alive. Every week reveals another version of yourself.
There is another milestone, another lesson, another mountain; you wake up different than you were yesterday. Growth is visible, identity is expanding, and there is magic in that.
There is something profoundly human about discovering that you are capable of more than you once believed.
I don’t think we should ever lose that.
Curiosity matters. Exploration matters. Changing your mind matters. Contradicting yourself matters.
In fact, I think contradiction is often what happens right before clarity.
You cannot discover who you are without also discovering who you are not.
Sometimes the life you thought you wanted exists only so you can grow into the person who realizes you want something else.
There is beauty in that.
But somewhere along the way, I noticed something. I knew how to chase becoming but I didn’t know how to live inside being.
The moment the climb ended, something inside me would quietly begin searching for another mountain. Not because the current one wasn’t beautiful but because I no longer knew who I was without the climb.
That realization stopped me because maybe I wasn’t chasing goals; maybe I was chasing the feeling of becoming someone new.
And what happens when there is no one left to become? What happens when the marathon is over? When the promotion arrives? When the waitlists exist? When the dream you’ve been carrying for years finally becomes ordinary? Who are you then? More importantly, can you still love the thing once it stops proving something about you? I think that is the question I have been avoiding my entire life.
There are two kinds of aliveness.
The first is the electricity of becoming.
It whispers,
“Look how far you’ve come.”
The second is the warmth of being.
It whispers,
“You don’t have to go anywhere to belong.”
For most of my life, I confused the first one for the whole story. I thought purpose lived in achievement. I thought identity lived in progress. I thought peace would arrive after the next summit.
But summits are strange places. They’re breathtaking. And temporary. You were never meant to build a home on top of a mountain. You visit, you celebrate, then you come back down.
Maybe that’s why so many of us feel empty after accomplishing the very thing we spent years chasing.
We mistake the summit for the destination. It was never the destination, though. It was the view.
Home has always been lower. Quieter. Closer to the ground.
Lately I’ve realized that roots do something mountains never can.
Mountains teach us how to climb; roots teach us how to stay.
Not stay out of fear but stay out of love.
There’s a difference.
Because staying is not settling. Settling is believing nothing more is possible. Staying is choosing to deepen instead of constantly beginning again.
I think I’ve confused those two for a very long time.
I thought staying meant the adventure was over. Now I wonder if staying is where the deepest adventure begins.
Because anyone can fall in love with something while it’s changing their life.
Can you love it when it simply becomes part of your life? Can you wake up and run when there isn’t a race? Can you write when nobody is waiting? Can you teach when there are no promotions left to earn? Can you remain devoted when there is nothing left to prove?
Maybe that’s what commitment really is. Not staying because you have to but staying because you’ve discovered something worth returning to.
Again. And again. And again.
The older I get, the less I think life is asking me to stop becoming.
I still want dreams. I still want mountains. I still want impossible goals that make my heart race.
I hope I never lose that part of myself. But I hope I learn something else too. I hope I learn how to come home. To wake up on an ordinary Tuesday and find joy in a familiar run. To write an essay because writing is where I meet myself, not because it leads somewhere. To love the quiet seasons as much as I once loved the dramatic ones. To understand that the absence of excitement isn’t the absence of meaning. Sometimes it’s the arrival of peace.
Maybe that is what maturity really is. Not the death of ambition but the marriage of ambition and contentment. The ability to chase the becoming; without abandoning the being.
Maybe that’s why the name Root to Rise found me long before I understood it.
For years, I lived the second half: Rise. Achieve. Grow. Become.
Now life is introducing me to the first half: Root.
Roots don’t stop a tree from reaching toward the sky; they simply make sure the tree has somewhere to return its strength.
They don’t celebrate every season, they don’t need applause; they quietly repeat the same faithful work beneath the surface.
Perhaps that is the kind of person I want to become now; someone who knows that no matter how many mountains she climbs, she always has a place to come home. And maybe that’s what commitment has been all along; not chaining yourself to one place, not refusing to change, not staying simply because leaving would look inconsistent, but maybe commitment is something much gentler. Maybe commitment is learning to love what remains after the excitement fades. To trust the ordinary. To build a life that doesn’t always need another summit to remind you that you’re alive.
Because there is magic in becoming, but there is also something sacred about finally believing, that who you are today is already someone worth coming home to.