Saturday, December 3, 2011

Defining and Doing the Duty





Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;



Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.



                            GEORGE PEELE, Polyhymnia




Last week, we went to watch Phillip Glass' opera 'Satyagraha' live from the Met right here in Puerto Rico. The show touched on Gandhi ji's life in South Africa. Instead of using real life conversations, Glass used teachings from Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture. There I found another important piece that will help us to continue to complete the mosaic of inner peace.



'Duty' (from "due" meaning "that which is owing") is that piece. In the past, we have talked about forgiveness, acceptance, having a bird's eye view to situation, moving forward, and service as few virtues to claim and sustain inner peace. Somehow, we did not give sufficient emphasis on our day-to-day duty meaning our duty towards our spouses, children, our jobs as well as the higher duty towards the humanity, environment and our creator. 


We all, deep down in hearts, know what is our duty and often loose our peace of mind just because we fail to fulfill it. Therefore, it is crucial that we keep our focus on doing our duty. We can't control the outcome always because so many factors and people play a role in accomplishing/finishing a task, a conversation or a process. As far as we know we did our duty, no matter what the outcome was, we can be at peace with ourselves!


However, there are situations where for some reason, we are/were able to fulfill our duty and it hurts. It hurts but by letting it hurt us, we are not helping ourselves either. What we need to do is to learn a lesson from it, make the necessary changes in ourselves and in the circumstances to ensure that if ever again we are in a similar situation, we are capable of doing our duty. Remember, anytime is a good time to move on from a hurtful situation. 


One thing that is very important to mention before we close this post and that is, 'define your duty as the  symphony that is created both with your heart and your mind'. Not based on external factors such as other people, books, movies, so on and so forth. You are unique, your experiences are unique, your needs are unique, your worldview is unique and therefore the way You define Your duty.


Let us identify our duty and put all our strength in fulfilling it without ceasing, accept the failures, learn to forgive, and peace will follow!

4 comments:

  1. Wow. The timing of this post is incredible. I was just telling my aunt that I am not going to apply for a direct PhD and want to do my masters first :D I dont know if you can form the connection between that and your post but what you say makes a lot more sense now.

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  2. I am not sure... maybe the post is too simple... :-)

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  3. Let us identify our duty and put all our strength in fulfilling it without ceasing, accept the failures, learn to forgive, and peace will follow!very well said ..

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  4. Excellent.
    It's always a pleasure to read you.
    Thanks.

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