“Duty is the most over-lauded word in the whole vocabulary of life. Duty is the cold, bare anatomy of righteousness. Duty looks at life as a debt to be paid; love sees life as a debt to be collected. Duty is ever paying assessments; love is constantly counting its premiums.
Duty is forced, like a pump; love is spontaneous, like a fountain. Duty is prescribed and formal; it is part of the red tape of life. It means running on moral rails. It is good enough as a beginning; it is poor as a finality.” ~ William George Jordan
How do you live your life? Are you a slave to your highest vision, driven out of duty to give your best having resigned yourself to fighting the good fight? Or are you compelled by love, inspired to bless all that comes within your field of influence having yielded your body, mind and heart to the inexhaustible source of love within you?
While the two approaches may look the same on the surface, there is a HUGE difference between the two when you take a closer look. The difference between functioning out of duty versus love is like the difference between working as an indentured servant versus a co-owner. You cannot answer your inner or higher calling out of a sense of duty for very long. So doing will drain you of your vital life force, for serving solely out of duty is like cutting the yard of life with a push mower. Doing what you do on the basis of duty plus love, however, propels you in ways that are hardly imaginable if you haven’t yet had the experience.
To be sure you can go through an entire relationship, career or even a life without ever rising above duty or obligation. Such a life would be more fulfilling than one based in self-serving avarice, for instance, but it is a poor substitute for a life that springs from a centering in love.
So where do you start if you are interested in moving beyond where you are now? The perfect starting point is to be dutiful, yes, in the sense of showing up on time, giving it your best and never leaving matters untidy or unfinished but from there you must learn to keep your heart clear and fresh, by deeply appreciating the opportunities and resources you have at your present disposal to bless, heal and bring peace to the world around you.
Duty becomes cold and empty over time if it is not infused with the intensifying current of love. Duty alone is like an infertile womb; it is designed for creation but does not function as such. Duty plus love allows you to be pregnant with creative inspiration at every turn, no matter how tight the noose of circumstance may be.
When you live on the basis of duty and love, nothing you ever give of yourself will feel like a sacrifice, as something traded for something else. Blessing begets blessing when love and duty are at hand. If your foundation of duty is continually fertilized by the love that surges from within you, primed by a passion for righteousness, then your field of circumstance will yield harvest after harvest. If you live strictly on a basis of feeling obligated or duty-bound, you will burn out before you reach your full potential and your highest vision will bind you to self-sacrifice, rather than to noble service.
To which do you aspire?
Gregory Hake 
Loved this, thanks!
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In a way, the world is full of dutiful derelicts. What I mean by that is the observation that so many who gave their lives to performing their jobs as a duty failed to engage themselves into what they were doing, leading to a void of a true and complete experience. My generation, most of whom are now retired, often have the feeling of wasting their lives being dutiful (good hard working employees who never had more than a job)but never took ownership of what they were doing. They as a general rule waited for somebody to tell them what to do and did not engage their own initiative. Years later they realized that they have wasted their working lives not because they were lousy emplyees but because they never really engaged the real driver of a great life, love, into their place of employment.
We can change that experience today by allowing the principles of duty and love to work together as we go about the daily tasks that we do. Yes, in the workplace for certain, but also in all other aspects of our lives. And I for one am deeply grateful to be able to begin that process today!
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This is a very interesting distinction and it makes a lot of sense. Basically I believe it boils down to this: when you live your life, are you able to tap into the wellspring that is love? If you aren’t able to do that, you can do some of what you need to do, but it will be a shadow of the possibility. Duty will make you bitter and brittle, too harsh where you should be flexible. Love will make you dynamic and boundless. If you want to live up to your full potential, love is a necessity.
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Well said!
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This makes perfect sense – you have to have something of a personal investment in what you do. I can see how mere duty binds you to your tasks like as a robot, but without the necessary care and quality of attention that the care brings into the tasks, well then it would be hard to not feel burned out over time or to feel you’ve sacrificed too much.
Colleagues of mine, we talk about this all the time, about this matter of burning out and knowing when to say whoah, enough already, time to take some time out. While I tend to agree with setting up proper boundaries between the personal and professional, home and work sort of thing, I think now there is a bit more to it. Within the different aspects of our lives, still we are doing things compelled by some combination of duty and love. Maybe the stress we feel at times is not so much a blur in the boundaries but in our underlying attitudes to what we do. Are we bound to our tasks by a mechanical sense of duty or is there some love behind it propelling us to do what we do? I’d say the uniqueness of what love is and does is going to take one further every single time. Even if the task is carried out exactly the same, the way you feel about it and the way it affects both you and the recipient(s) will be way different. It takes some soul searching to connect to this consistently and allow it to change one’s life, that’s for sure.
This is good to know, good to be of aware of. Good day!
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Again, a great expose! People tend to feel highly self-righteous about duty-driven actions, and yet if one’s duty-bound compulsions are constantly opposed by very different longings of the heart, the result will be a negated life. Certainly there are times when one might prefer this over that, but if the right thing is clear to be done, letting the passion of one’s being flow into that direction without the drag of “if only’s”…here is a pattern for ultimate fulfillment!
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A defining distinction that will make a huge difference in the results. This matters in a career or profession, the saying, “do what you love” is more accurately said as “love what you do”! Happiness and fulfillment will be attainable when our lives are infused with love.
Great post, thanks.
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I love the message on your post today, thanks.
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What your describing is often the experience as a step parent. You start out as a dutiful, responsible teacher and guide then you suddenly realize your investiture is so much more. Love and pride go far deeper than even compassion or empathy. I guess it is the difference between an employee and an owner. It’s wonderful to experience and watch.
Beautiful words today that can transform life from ordinary to extraordinary, thanks.
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