The Lost Art of Following Through

I’m 24. Looking around at my friend group, I’m a ways away from peak wedding season that I know awaits me later in my twenties. But I have a few older friends, and today I got my first wedding invitation.

I’d received the save-the-date months earlier, so I wasn’t expecting any surprises in the sealed envelope. I open it, scan the invite. At the bottom: YES / NO.

I won’t dramatize it. It’s not like my anxiety spiked. A fear of commitment didn’t flood over me, and I didn’t freeze. But interestingly, I noticed a quiet thought in my head: Oh, I can’t say “Maybe.”

In retrospect, the idea of RSVP’ing “Maybe” to a wedding is pretty funny. But what does it say that my subconscious wanted to keep my options open? On the day of my friend’s wedding?

Flakiness has become normal. A text the day-of with a half-hearted apology that sounds more like “you understand.” Partiful invites stacked with Maybes. It’s at best the Instagram-like posturing (“I’m busy, I’m popular”) and at worst, it’s exposing a generation that doesn’t know how to make, let alone keep a promise.

My friends do this. I do this often. It’s not malice, but it exposes a drift in our values. When we can’t keep the most basic promises, something larger erodes: our trust in others, and more importantly, our trust in ourselves.

Following through isn’t glamorous. There’s no dopamine rush in showing up tired, or saying no to other plans that come up. But it’s likely in those unglamorous moments, when no one’s watching and the easier path is to bail, that trust gets stitched back together.

We don’t need more people with ideas. We need more people who follow through and finish them. And maybe we’d get there if we printed our group chat plans on card stock with beautiful calligraphy. “Kindly join us to hang-out sometime” JOYFULLY ACCEPTS / REGRETFULLY DECLINES.

- Randy Perecman