FREEDOM AND COMMITMENT

The transition between high school and college is one of the most crucial points in a young person's life. The first months of college are a time of aspirations and ideals, of hopes and dreams, and of high anticipation. They are also a time of not a little confusion and uncertainty, as questions about how to deal with new peers, new situations, and new intellectual and moral challenges abound.

The reason this period of transition is of such importance is clear: for most young men, it is the first time they have lived away from home for any extended period of time and essentially run their own lives. For the first time, they are "free to do as they please" for the most part-a prospect both exciting and, truth be told, frightening. The newfound freedom of a college student extends to everything from whom they choose to associate with to when they get up in the morning; from things as important as how they approach their studies to things as seemingly mundane as how they keep their room, how they dress, and what they eat. In short, they are arranging their own existences and making their own choices-for the most part unsupervised-for the first time in their lives.

With the moral environment on the typical campus what it is today, parents are increasingly concerned about what those choices will be. They hear stories about record levels of binge-drinking, increasing drug use, rampant eating disorders, and an "Animal House"-type atmosphere in which casual sex is the norm. Even more disturbing, surveys of college students taken over the course of their undergraduate years show a loss of religious faith and practice, along with a significant increase in relativistic moral thinking. It appears that parents have reason for concern.

One big problem is the fact that our culture doesn't exactly prepare students to use their newfound freedom in a responsible manner. There is something missing in our popular culture's conception of freedom. You'll notice it in all the catch-phrases commonly thrown around in private conversation and public discourse on the topic: "Freedom to live as I choose," "Freedom to say what I wish," "Freedom to do as I please," "Freedom to think whatever I want," and-perhaps most commonly-"Freedom to choose."

What's missing in each of these commonly-employed formulations is the notion that freedom has any positive content whatsoever. Despite the somewhat deceptive phrasing, all of the expressions above share a fundamental conception of freedom as a lack of restrictions on one's behavior, or even more, a lack of restrictions on one's options.

But this prevalent notion of freedom as keeping one's options perennially/perpetually open is quite an impoverished understanding. It implies that freedom in practice is a continual exercise in avoiding commitment, a matter of evading all responsibility as long as possible.

Of course, freedom is much more that "freedom from." If it is to be exercised at all, freedom entails committing oneself to a particular course of action. And in the real world, the positive use of one's freedom by committing to something or someone always entails ruling out other possible courses of action and closing down other avenues of pursuit. As G. K. Chesterton wrote in his classic Orthodoxy: "Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion."

Rather than simply an absence of constraints on behavior, or the opportunity to enjoy the widest possible array of consumer goods, true freedom depends upon commitment to something beyond an individualistic notion of self-interest. In fact, true personal freedom is attained in, and exercised in, the context of long-term commitments to others that are honored regardless of the personal cost. Freedom in the most fundamental sense of domination of one's own passions and whims-the ability to act in a determined, consistent fashion according to one's beliefs no matter what the environment-is really a product of lived commitment. It is a plant that is nourished in the soil of responsibility to others.

You can get a pretty accurate gauge of the vitality of personal freedom in a society by looking at how people are living up to their commitments to others, particularly within the family context. As we might expect in a culture with a seriously deficient understanding of freedom, the statistics that reflect how well we are living up to-or even bothering to make commitments in the first place-are not very encouraging. The marriage rate has declined by almost 50 percent/half in the last 35 years, and the average age of marriage has steadily gone up. Overall, the chances that a marriage will end in divorce are about 1 in 2. The number of cohabiting couples has soared by almost 1000 percent in the same period. The birth rate for married couples-the most fundamental indication of the commitment of adults to children-continues down. Even commitment as measured in terms of membership in civic organizations in neighborhoods and communities is at an historic low.

There's no denying that the cultural and intellectual atmosphere that young people imbibe at college has an influence on the way they use-or fail to use-their freedom as adults. At the very least, it is a time when patterns of behavior develop, for good or ill, that are carried into adult life. Parents can no longer depend (if they ever could) on the cultural environment of a university, or of society at large, to reinforce the values they have tried to transmit to their children.

That is why it's so important for young men to already have a solid grasp of the responsible use of their freedom in their high school years, so that they can carry the good habits they have learned along with them into their college years. If they learn to use their freedom responsibly in high school, they will go off to college as morally committed men of character, as leaders who know how to influence their environment rather than be led by it, as individuals who are confident of their own beliefs and carry their own moral environment with them wherever they go. Parents needn't worry about the choices they will make when they leave home, because they already have evidence of their sons' good judgment and freedom exercised responsibly while still under their roof.

Training young men to use their freedom well-while learning the value of lasting, lifelong commitment-is what Tenley's programs for young men are all about. Tenley teaches them this notion of freedom through commitment in several important ways. First and foremost, by emphasizing the importance of living up to their family obligations, and the demands made on them by their parents. These include not only pitching in at home, but taking their studies seriously, realizing that taking advantage of their educational opportunities is not only wise, but is also the fulfillment of a serious obligation. In addition, Tenley's programs encourage teenagers to freely commit themselves in a variety of ways:

By participating in seminars and service-oriented programs which, while not mandatory like school attendance, still demand ongoing participation and fulfillment of freely assumed obligations.

• By helping their friends to recognize their obligations to those around them, and by inviting them to learn the value of freely made commitments for themselves
  
  
• By widening their horizons and helping them to see that their present work and study is a preparation for fulfilling future family responsibilities.
  
  
• By helping them to realize that fulfilling the duties of their natural and supernatural vocation as sons of God on a daily basis is the very purpose of the freedom they have been given.

Young men will soon realize when coming to Tenley that no one pressures them to participate in any of the activities, but that once they have given their word and committed themselves to something, the will be expected to carry out the commitments they have freely taken on. It is only by entrusting teens with the responsibility of their own choices that we can expect them to grow into mature individuals who know how to use their freedom in a way that benefits themselves, their friends, and their society.