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                  Your Duty as a Human Being


A Simple Question That You Can Ask Yourself:


“Perform your prescribed duty, for action is better than inaction. A man cannot even maintain his physical body without work.” Bhagavad Gita 3.8


Think about the time and energy you commit to avoiding your responsibilities (come on, we all do it, I’m just about a master procrastinator when I need to be). It’s difficult to think of a worse kind of investment of your resources that you can possibly make: fleeting relief in the short-term and non-existent returns in the long-term. 


I like taking a much broader approach. When I just don’t have it in me to create something with verve, I can still perform my prescribed duty of self-cultivation by reading or meditation.


Inaction disguises itself in clever ways, changing like a shapeshifter throughout the history of humankind. Maybe a thousand years ago it looked like avoiding the task of going out and tending to the fields. Today it seems we often encounter it on the internet. It looks a little different for all of us. Every time you distract yourself from the work you really should be doing, whatever it may be — physical, emotional, spiritual — is more time you are not performing your prescribed duty.


The question that helps me put the really important things in life into perspective is actually pretty simple, and I enjoy pondering it from time to time:


“What am I here to do?”


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