Sometimes I get revelations while listening to Bruno Mars.

Living in a culture of choice presents unique problems. The freedom to choose can be liberating or paralyzing, because no matter what we choose, the anxiety of neglected choices looms over us.

In our 20's, it's game-time for choosing. We fret about where we work, but that's just one pea-sized piece in a jigsaw puzzle that's constantly changing shape. After you get a job, you still have to figure out what you actually want to do with your life and how in the world you're ever going to make money doing that thing when you probably suck at it. Then you have to decide who you love, and find ways to make sure they stay in the picture...or take them out of it.

We put the pieces together one by one, and then the puzzle picture changes, and we have to start over again. Then some wise adult touches our hand and says, "It all works out in the end."

It probably works out in the end because at some point, we get serious about our commitments. (Smedes writes a good article about this). He says most of our identity comes from making wise promises and keeping them. When you make a promise to someone or something, you create a sanctuary in a jungle of unpredictability.

What have you made a promise to?

Listening to the radio today, I thought about the process of pursuing music: how frustrating and fun it is, how sometimes I feel like a goddess but most of the time I just feel like a hipster idiot penning lyrics on duck tape to my kitchen table.

But things that matter the most always cost the most. I can't think of anything more foolish than an army of marching in circles around a fortified city for 7 days, blowing trumpets. We wish that walls would come down on their own, but that's not the way it works. Truly profound things are rarely accomplished normally, and, without bruises to your ego. You write 25 songs that are just okay and want to kill yourself. Then you write one good chorus and feel like you will live forever. It's an ebb and flow: glory and shame, glory and shame.

Success is irrelevant - what matters is that you have made a promise to something that matters. The rest isn't up to you.