Duty

Duty

Duty is what people use against you when they want something.

Duty is what keeps people doing the "important" things in life and keeps them from the things that really matter.

Duty is coercion that you can live with. It's easy to slight yourself for someone else as long as you were duty-bound to do it.

Duty gets people killed.

Duty breaks hearts and tramples love.

Duty is the only thing keeping our world together it seems.

What is your duty?

Is it to yourself? Your family? Your loved ones?

Is it to your country? Your dog? Complete strangers?

How do you choose a stranger over family?

How do you choose family over the love of your life?

How do you live with the choices you have to make?

How do I accept this and move on?




Eh... Not very poetic of me. Not angry or directed at people, but exploration of my mind and my emotions in regard to things that frustrate me.

The self is one of the highest values in life. If you don't take care of yourself, love yourself, be yourself, then who will? There is only one person in the world that can be you and no matter what you do, you will always be yourself.

Duty is to yourself first. Perhaps a backwards philosophy when you think of all of the people that have taken care of you, protected you and fed you throughout your life. Our society is quick to forget them, but how can we let them control us even still? They are beholden to someone in the same ways as well. Perhaps even beholden back to you if not now, but later.

This topic won't soon be done. There is too much human psychobabble here. Too much history and life revolves around this topic. Love, life, profession, everything there is to be done is touched upon by what compels us. Some of those things listed compel us themselves, but duty is the one that I focus on now. Turn your back on what you want and what you feel is right for duty. My duty is to the greatness of the human race. My duty is to myself. My duty is to my country and to my family. My duty is to the commitments and honor of my spoken and written word. My duty is to God. None of these by virtue are greater than the rest. All of them are important. All of them will at some point get "the finger" if they require me to do something that I'm not prepared to do. My God doesn't tell me to kill people and if he suddenly started, we'd have words, productive or not. My duty has limits. Duty is not the highest virtue we possess.

Balances

Now hopefully that I have my digression out of the way, I can stand to think and write of what I intended to...

Balances. Conquering. Strong words for a little person in a big world, but it was something that was interesting to see and do on this trip. People might not always appreciate the way my mind works, but it's hard for me to not see things in as black and white an image as this.

When I came over here I was affraid that I would jump into the middle of a group of people and much like water displace them from their stasis and lives to make room for myself. That's the type of conquering that I'm talking about. Conflict: Man Vs. Man, Man Vs. Nature, Man Vs. Himself. This is more Man Vs. Nature and himself than Man vs. Man. I don't have subjects.

In any case, one of the things that helped me cope with it early on was deciding how to use that natural abiltiy, talent and power. A little back story, I am not often one to shake up the norms because I adore seeing things in their natural state. It depends on what they are and such, but if you ever see me get soft over a folded piece of paper (like it was wrecked or something) that's part of it. It's silly, but anyways. I didn't want to come here, disrupt, and go home. The last thing I wanted to do was create space for myself and then leave it in a vacuum when I left. Afterall, that's what the British did.

At the same time, I needed to figure out how to proceed. Inevitably the moment I get off of the plane things change. Life is plinko. You cannot so much as be in an empty room as not be changing something for someone else. So the result became to take. The first thought was to just take what was wanted, but that's not really what I'm about, despite all of the conquering talk I don't make many friends that way and while my friend count isn't what is important in life, I'd rather be making them than enemies.

Second thought is to take and wait for the reaction. This is a much harder balance to strike and as a result I have lived the last several years in a state of ask before taking. The timidness of which I approached things is very interesting. So I'm trying to flip the energy on the other side of that line a little bit. Take things tenetively and watch for the reaction.

Some things should always have permission, else we have murder, slavery and worse. Yet at the same time you can't often go through life just waiting for permission either. Why do I need permission from you to live the way that I want to? So I take.

I hang out with the people that will let me, I subtly try to feel for the atmosphere and pick up on their emotional states, to empathize and then steer it the way that I think it would be better. You wouldn't think it normal if I did anything else. The difference is subtle, but it was enough momentum for me to take greater control in my life. Watching Troy when I first got here, Achilles didn't ask for much permission. Neither did Agamemnon, FDR, Hitler and so many more. So why should I?

Not all of these people regarded those around them with the love and compassion that I hope to convey, but the underlying philosophy of their greatness is that they didn't wait for permission. If I want to be great in my own life, let alone take ownership of the greatness of a great country, we need to take that ownership. The permission is granted when no one objects.

Luckily the friendships that I have started here have helped a bit. Don't ask me how to proceed, act and let me tell you. Conversely don't doubt my own actions. Understand that I am a person of honor and integrity and not out trying to get a quick release of joy or some other self serving purpose. If you doubt my intentions and actions then you doubt me as a person and once that doubt is there how can it ever be overcome?

Interesting thoughts. I have learned much and blathered on much too much...