From the position of the person you made the promise to, it makes no difference whether your failure to fulfill the promise was intentional or accidental; the thing they needed done (and trusted you to do) isn’t, and they now have to deal with the consequences of your failure, whether it’s needing to find a ride home from the airport, finishing a recipie without a required ingredient, or explaining to a client why a project isn’t ready on time.
Forgetfulness may be easier to forgive (especially if there’s a good reason, rather than general flakiness), but it’s still breaking a promise.
I would regard forgetting as a way of breaking a promise. I wouldn’t regard it as an intentional insult (“No, I didn’t do it because I didn’t feel like it, you cretin”), but it would still be more severe than a case of force majeure (“I was going to pick you up, but a piano fell on my car and I had no way to contact you…”)
How I would react to it would depend on how apologetic the person was.
And yes, these rules apply to me, too, as my memory is shite.
It is easy to contrive situations that make it seem like a big deal or not so big of a deal. What if friend #1 promised to check up on my grandma for me because I was out of town? What if he forgot because his parents called and he got distracted? What if grandma fell and broke her hip and lay there for two days in pain and dehydrating because he forgot? Boy, I’m sure he would feel really bad. But he still broke his promise and feeling bad didn’t help Grandma any.
I stand by my statement that a promise not kept is a promise broken. How you deal with each individual broken promise will vary depending on the situation, but it is still a broken promise.
People who say things like this don’t understand what it means to be absent minded. And they never will. And they say things like “try harder”. It’s seriously like telling a kid with a learning disability, “try harder”. You might think that’s a cop out for me to say, but it isn’t.
Typical scenario: I’m getting dressed. I have one sock left to put on.
Wife: Can you bring my book downstairs when you’re done getting dressed.
Me: (with complete sincerity and surety) No problem. puts sock on. walks down stairs without book.
The number of times I do things like that is too great to count.
“start the dishwasher when you’re done watching the news.”
“ok”
goes to bed without starting the dishwasher
If I’m in the kitchen, and she says, “bring me a glass of water”. . .if I intersperse a single task between the request and the actual getting of the water, it’s 50-50 whether she gets the water.
Clearly, I’m in the camp that says forgetting is different than breaking a promise.
It’s almost as if the stuff I’m specifically required to do is the stuff that I just don’t process. I actually have a great memory as far as reciting quotes, passages, sports statistics. I’m excellent at trivia. I’m good with names, and remembering events that have happened.
But, I’m absolutely atrocious at remembering to do tasks.
First, we’re not talking about forgetting to pick up milk on your way home. We’re talking about promises. Second, kids with learning disabilities learn ways of working around them; why should you be any different? If you make a promise, and you know that you tend to be absent-minded, figure out a way to help yourself remember. Write notes, send yourself e-mails, invest in an organizer or PDA, set alarms, etc.
I have to write everything down, or I’ll most likely forget to do it. If I pass someone in the hall and they ask me to do something, if I don’t write it down as soon as I get back to my desk I’ll forget. But I know that about myself, so I do write everything down (and rely heavily on my PDA) – and the result is that I have a reputation for being organized and reliable, and for following through. I manage this while working full-time, going to grad school, holding a leadership position in Toastmasters International, doing sporadic volunteer work, and having some semblance of a personal life.
Again, I’m not talking about minor day-to-day stuff: I’m saying that if you can’t manage to remember promises, you should not make them. Period. IMO, there is no excuse.
A psychologist might speculate that you’re being passive-agrressive or acting out of unconscious hostility or rebellion. I’m not accusing you of this—more likely it’s just a matter of habit, or the way your brain’s wired up, or what you consider important—but it is a possibility that occured to me.
But even if your absent-mindedness is perfectly innocent, I agree with Misnomer that “if you can’t manage to remember promises, you should not make them.” Don’t say the words “I promise to…” if there’s any reasonable doubt that you’ll follow through, whether because you’ll forget, something else will come up, or whatever. I don’t put a casual “yeah, I’ll do that” on the same level as a promise, but if I were you I’d still only say it about minor matters that won’t be that bad if you don’t follow through (as Trunk’s examples all were), and/or to people who know you well enough that they know not to count on you doing what you said you’d do.
I don’t see any question about it; you can either keep or break a promise. If you attempt and fail, it’s a broken promise. If you simply forget, it’s a broken promise. Even if there are circumstances beyond your control, if a promise isn’t kept, it’s broken.
Extenuating circumstances go into the “it’s OK that you broke your promise” factor, but that doesn’t change the fact that your word was broken.
I know exactly what it’s like to be absent minded because I am extremely absent minded. And I am aware of it and I have strategies for coping. I never let important things depend on my memory. And when I forget unimportant things, I do them immediately upon being told that I’ve forgotten. I have good days and bad days, and I try hard not to let it impact other people.
[Team America]
Lisa: Promise me you’ll never die.
Gary: You know I can’t promise that.
Lisa: If you did that, I would make love to you right now.
Gary: I promise I will never die.
[/Team America]
Absent-minded or not, “I forgot” just doesn’t fly in the adult world. My memory is getting less sharp as I get older, but I’m finding ways around it - if I have to do something around the house, I write a note or hold it in my hand until I get to where it was supposed to go. For apppointments, etc, there is my trusty calendar. Of course, calendars are no good if you forget to write stuff in them, so stuff goes in pronto, before I have a chance to forget.
Saying you’re absent-minded and that’s just the way it is is like people saying they can’t spell or do some other thing - what you’re really saying is you aren’t interested in making any effort to fix it.
Oh yeah, the OP - forgetting is breaking a promise, but as others have said, I evaluate each instance on its own merit. A habitual forgetter is not likely to remain a friend of mine.
arial[/FONT[FONT=Arial Black]][arial 2QUOTE=Shagnasty]What about forgetting your child’s baseball game? What about forgetting about your best friends wedding (when you have a part)? What about forgetting about your own wedding?
There must be some limit to your viewpoint right?
I have ex-friends that tended to forget about a lot of stuff. Part of the promise is to assign enough importance to it so that you don’t forget.
[/QUOTE]
“Shagnasty” is close enough to “Shacknasty”, which was the name of a Modoc Indian under Captain Jack during the Modoc Indian War (northern CA) of 1873. Except his “full” name, as bestowed by whites, was Shacknasty Jim…and I’ll leave you to conclude why. Jim got offed in that war (as did nearly every Modoc) and didn’t live long enough for the forced transfer to good ol’ Oklahoma, where all the last of the Modocs died.
Just a bit of fluff.[FONT=Arial][SIZE=2][COLOR=Blue]