Personal Duty

One of Bhagavad Gita's themes is that of man and work--the individual's obligation to fulfill his duty during his lifetime. I suppose during the time Gita was written, determining this was more straightforward.

There were warriors, the Kshatriyas, merchants, the Vaishyas, and priests, Brahman. People could move freely between these casts before the system was rigidified, as best as I understand. Nonetheless, they had a clear-cut sense of duty and knew what they had to fulfill in life.

Based on what I know, I feel that identifying one's Dharma is more complicated in today's world. I was taught that I could become whatever I wanted. I was not educated from childhood, like Arjuna or Rama, that I will grow up to fight and govern, or that I would be a merchant. My duty is not clearly laid out for me, as it seems to have been for Arjuna.

In these past few months in quarantine, I've left the house once to pick up my high school diploma and 12-14 times to go running. Living inside the home has in a sense given me the freedom to do what I want when I want, but also necessitated that I identify my own sense of duty, one that would be challenging enough to keep me satisfied with myself, but reasonable enough that I can accomplish.

Now, what would happen if I had not laid out my duty? Based on my experience, my opinion is: disaster. In the second and third latest summer vacations of my life, I frequently felt confused at what I should do and accomplish, and not infrequently frustrated that I hadn't achieved the full potential that I could have for that summer. That's not to say I didn't have proud accomplishments during both summers (studying for tests, working on projects). However, constructing a routine and a sense of duty for myself last summer and to a greater degree this summer has resulted in less frequent thoughts of such a nature.

Now from this association between my planning and my sense of satisfaction, lack of helplessness, I conclude that finding my duty would play an important role in my future. I'll dedicate the remainder of this blog post to my views on my personal duty.

What do I view as my duty? Currently, I have a set of tasks that I put forth for myself to accomplish each day. On the basis of the completion of these tasks, I assess my success in fulfilling my duty for that day. These tasks have shifted over the course of my 5-month (and counting) indoor adventure, but fall along the lines of:

Exercise - Broken into 2 sessions. Session 1: 6 miles on exercise bike or 5K run; Session 2: Kickboxing/Conditioning drills.

Work - Broken into 25 minute sessions --> Set of 4 sessions becomes a block of 100 minutes. Daily my goal is to complete 3 such blocks. Given that this is met most days, I feel I should start expanding this threshold.

Quiet - Spending time alone in my room for minimum 1 hour, reading, thinking, cleaning, playing the piano, drawing, sleeping. Mostly I've been doing this 5-8pm, interrupted for dinner and second session of exercise.

The nature of this duty that I have set aside for myself gives me actionable goals for myself to meet each day, enabling me to gain the satisfaction in the quality of my work and preventing that feeling of helplessness which I often had earlier. I'll save discussion on my work for a future blog post, as that is also exciting. Thanks for reading!