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Quote of the Day: Duty
“Do not confuse ‘duty’ with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.” – Robert A. Heinlein
When I married, I assumed a duty to take care of my wife. It was an obligation I assumed voluntarily, indeed gladly, as did she to take care of me. As she was dying it went without saying I would take care of her.
It was not something the world expected of me. (The hospice staff told me many stories of spouses who abandoned their dying mate.) Rather, it was something I expected of myself.
Heinlein was right. It was one of the most difficult trials of my life. Its reward was self-respect. As I held her hand while she was dying, I knew I had done my duty, and done it out of joy and love, not mere obligation.
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When it comes right down to it, what else in life is more important? I can’t think of one thing. An example of selflessness in marriage is not even taught anymore is it?
Beautiful, Seawriter. Our duty which we honor to those we love is a way to serve and fulfill–it is a duty, but so gratifying and humbling to be in that place. When I tell people that I “serve” my husband, they often perceive that as degrading or shameful. But that is never true, for fulfilling one’s duty in love is to also honor G-d.
Nope. It’s discouraged. Fortunately my sons (and their women) seem to be watching what Jan and I did and ignoring the world.
My heart goes out to you @seawriter.
I’ll offer this article by Kevin Williams. It’s his Christmas article from a few years ago. I have it bookmarked and read it periodically. It speaks St Joseph and to duty, and the responsibility that it carries.
You and yours are still in my prayers.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428980/christmas-scenes-strange-families
Serve is such a strange word. When serve is done as a rote collection of tasks then it is menial and degrading. When serve is done with love and concern then it becomes noble. Strange word this serve thing is. You can look at someone doing something and never know what is in their soul and mind which is what would define service as either menial or noble. I could be a janitor in a hospital mopping floors. If I never raised my eyes up to see what was going on around me then it would be very easy for me to see my service as menial. If, on the other hand, I chose to see what I was doing as part of a greater whole, the mending of bodies, then what I do becomes honorable and noble.
It is, indeed. Consider how politicians insist they are “public servants.” If so, they are pilfering the silverware.
Sea,
You are completely right that duty is personal. It is between you, your conscience and Gd. However, when I hear of people like you in the world it gives me courage.
Thanks for the post.
Regards,
Jim
Praying for some peace for you, friend.
It is good to see you here. Thank you for sharing these wise words.
I think Mark just did a mighty fine job of teaching it to those around him. We learn far more from those we live with and those we admire than those appointed to teach us.
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I am at peace, no fear on that.
The Orthodox Christians have a service the evening before the funeral. At the end of it, those who knew the deceased speak. During his remarks my brother-in-law, Janet’s brother, stated a good teacher makes themselves unnecessary. She prepares her students to go on without the teacher, to flourish and prosper without constantly needing to go back to their teacher for guidance. He concluded by saying Janet was a good teacher. He was right.
Her last act of grace was to teach me and my sons that we can go on without her. That her need to die holding my hand was far greater than my need to die holding hers.
Instead of grief I am filled with a deep and profound awe that I was privileged to have shared 45 years of my life with her. I will miss her deeply. I will be sad that I shall no longer have her guidance and her judgement. But I am at peace, as are my sons.
I wonder if the male and female versions of duty are different.
My mother and I hospiced our father at home. We did what had to be done, and would not have done otherwise, but it would be strange to call the reward self-respect. It was more like closure.
That is a sad thought to contemplate.
As usual, right on.
Gratitude is grace.
You have done well, you have done right, and you deserve to rest in that knowledge.
Animals act as dictated by instinct. Resolve, which enables us to consciously shoulder duty, is what makes us human.
But in your case @seawriter, I credit not “duty”, but a different four letter word:
…”Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out e’en to the edge of doom…”
It often strikes me how many heroes are uncomfortable being described as heroes. They just don’t understand. They’re reluctant to take credit for some heroic act, because as far as they could tell, they were simply doing what they were supposed to do. Nothing more.
Mother Theresa’ poem captures this idea at the end:
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind,
people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful,
you will win some false friends and some true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you.
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight.
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough.
Give the best you’ve got anyway.
You see,
in the final analysis it is between you and God;
it was never between you and them anyway.
Having watched my father go through my mother’s last days, and then myself doing that office for him, I’ve observed that when the death finally occurs, what the survivor misses most is the care you were giving, more than the gratitude or concern you were receiving (before reason was dethroned in the dying person). To stanch that flow, to have no outlet now for all your love and care, is supremely painful.
Oh when I think of those awe-ful last days, days which you know must necessarily be few, but which, it begins to seem, will never end! His Serene Majesty, Death, having entered the room, but waiting respectfully, even patiently: he’s got all the time there is…then I know, although we have to deny the knowledge in order to go on: it is fearful and dread to be created mortal as we are.
Sorry for your loss. God bless!
Hmm… In my case, I then made all the arrangements for my father’s memorial service for my mother, which (as he was not a religious man and he had been cremated) took well over a month – there was no religiously-ordained schedule to adhere to, and what friends and family he had left were scattered and elderly, and needed time to arrange the trip.
Because my mother desired it (she is not a religious woman, but something of a traditionalist), the service was held in a church, with a pastor, but the family felt it would have been disrespectful to my father’s memory to have the service adhere too closely to liturgy. So there was a lot to do. And soon after that, my MIL started going, with her memorial service that summer, also not liturgical, but rather a family trip to scatter her ashes at her favorite camping spots. Maybe I was lucky to have no shortage of outlets for continuing to express care after my father died?
Yes. I think the funeral is the easiest time, you still feel you’re doing something for the dead person. And attention is being paid.
But then, it’s over, and everyone else just gets back to their lives, naturally stops thinking of the dead person, everyone except the immediately bereaved. “Time, like an ever-rolling stream/ Bears all her sons away…”