[An Essay from My Heart]

A Ring Is Not a Promise; Fidelity Is a Habit

Many people wear rings all the time.
Wedding rings in particular are treated as objects that speak volumes without words. When asked why they wear them constantly, most people answer, “To honor my fidelity to my spouse.” It is a response that sounds correct—and persuasive.

Yet I often hesitate at that answer.
Between the fact of wearing a ring and the claim of keeping fidelity lies a distance deeper than one might expect.

Fidelity is not, by nature, an object.
When Confucius spoke of xin (信), he did not describe it as ornament or declaration. Fidelity meant a long-standing alignment between words and actions. In other words, fidelity is not a momentary resolution but an accumulation over time—not a single promise, but the result of countless repeated choices.

Seen in this light, a ring is not proof of fidelity but closer to a pledge toward it. The problem is that pledging is easy, while endurance is hard. Look around, and one sees many people wearing rings, yet far fewer who carry their relationships to the end. Family structures change frequently, and marriage is often treated as a revisable contract.

American society places great value on freedom.
Individual emotions and choices are to be respected, and there is a widely shared belief that unhappy relationships need not be forced to continue. This is undoubtedly one of the society’s strengths. But when such freedom lightens the weight of fidelity, promises gradually to remain as declarations only.

Here, fidelity is no longer understood as “keeping something to the end,” but is reduced to “being sincere for now.” As long as emotions endure, fidelity is valid; when emotions change, fidelity expires. As a result, the ring stays in the same place, while the marriage itself remains in constant motion.

At this point, I find myself asking:
Can fidelity truly depend on emotion? Or must it be a will that transcends emotion? In the humanistic tradition, fidelity has always leaned toward the latter. It was not something one kept because it felt good, but something one endured because one had chosen to keep it.

True fidelity is not easily visible.
It resides not in a gleaming ring, but in the actions that remain when words grow fewer. Not in relationships without conflict, but in relationships that have passed through conflict. It lives in quiet resolve—the determination to bear responsibility without surrendering freedom.

That is why I no longer judge fidelity by the presence of a ring.
Instead, I look at time:
How long one has continued to choose the same person,
how often one has reclaimed a relationship in the name of responsibility.

A ring can be removed and disappear.
Fidelity cannot.
It remains as a daily habit and, in time, becomes a person’s character.
And perhaps what we should truly fear is not losing a ring, but losing that habit itself.

January 12, 2026
At Sungsunjae (崇善齋)

{Solti}

한국어 번역: https://www.ktown1st.com/blog/VALover/348206