Sankalp
An old Sanskrit word for a resolve made with the whole of yourself. Onward is built around it.
The word
Saṅkalpa joins sam, together or whole, to a root that means to set in order, or to resolve. It is the intention spoken aloud before a ritual begins, naming the day, the place and the purpose. In a life, it is a resolve that gathers everything behind one thing.
Not a goal to tick off. Not a habit to keep up. A vow that changes the person who makes it.
The size of the thing
The force of a sankalp is set less by willpower than by what it points at. A small aim asks for little, and gets little. An aim larger than yourself, one you cannot yet meet, is the one that calls up the strength to meet it.
The strength comes after
In the Ramayana, when the search for Sita reaches the shore of the ocean, Hanuman does not remember his own strength. The old bear Jambavan reminds him of it, and only then, with the leap to Lanka the one way forward, does he find it.
The vow Onward offers says the same in plain words: I do not currently have the strength for it. The strength will come because I have committed, not before.
Action without attachment
The teaching the Bhagavad Gita gives Arjuna is often called nishkama karma: action without attachment to its fruit. You act fully, and the outcome is not the measure of you.
So in Onward a missed day is not a failure. It is part of the path. There are no streaks, no badges and no score, because those make the count the thing you protect.
Onward
A quiet iPhone app for one long commitment. Free to walk for as long as you walk; one purchase, made once, opens the eleven places after the first, for every journey. No subscription. No account. Everything you write is encrypted on your phone.
For iPhone, iOS 17 or later.