Duty Is Not A Four Letter Word

Duty.

The word conjures up images of a woman running a vacuum cleaner over the living room carpet as sweat drips from her brow. Of clocking in and out of a job serving tables at a restaurant, cleaning toilets in an airport, slaving away on construction projects where supervisors push you and prod you to do more. It brings up scenes of washing dishes, of nursing a crying baby in the middle of the night, of visiting the crotchety old neighbor whom nobody likes.

In other words, in the minds of most modern people, duty is that catch-all word referring to any and every task that keeps you from living the good, easy life.

I used to be “most people.”

For a long time, longer than I care to admit, I despised anything that smacked of duty. I loathed the paperwork and classroom management that consisted of most of my days on my teaching job. When I became a mother, I got quickly frustrated with the difficulties of caring for a high-maintenance baby. I chose to homeschool my son, believing it to be my duty to raise him fully. A few years into it, and I was secretly envying those mothers who got a break from their child-rearing duties by sending their offspring to school.

I started to resent having to do housework, the washing of dishes and clothes that never ended, the constant food preparation. Then when I made a valiant attempt to make money online, in part to be able to escape for some time each day from my duties as a homeschooling mom and homemaker, I eventually came to resent all the tedious parts of my business that made it feel like a job.

When our son was seven, we moved onto a rural property. At first, I was gung-ho about finally having the space to grow most of our own food. But it wasn’t long after that I came to resent the weeding, the watering, the pest control.

I can blame part of my bad attitude on the anxiety I didn’t realize I was suffering from. But the bald truth is, I had gotten sucked into the modern belief that "duty" is a four letter word. Duty is tedious, mind-numbing, soul-sucking, and joyless, and should be avoided at all costs.

The big sin of humanity.

While this desire to shirk duty is hardly a new thing in the history of humankind, it’s become more intense since the industrial age. With the invention of appliances and the computer, we’ve become more spoiled with each passing generation. But instead of appreciating and being content with how much easier life is today, we’ve become more envious than ever, more prideful than ever. We feel entitled to “the good life,” which generally means a life easier and consisting of more wealth than the one we have. This pride leads to our envying others who seem to have what we want.

Who seem to live carefree lives relatively free of duty.

But if you’re reading this post from the comfort of your home and on your own phone, tablet, or computer, your life is much easier than people living a mere fifty years ago, when there were already an array of modern conveniences to choose from. So the problem isn’t with reality. The problem is our perspective of reality.

And, more to the point here, our perspective of duty.

Duty is what you make of it.

There are two ways to look at duties.

They can be tasks that we have to do. And therefore are to be despised.

Or.

They are tasks that we get to do.

I remember once hearing a preacher say that when your car breaks down, thank God that you have a car to break down. What if we applied that attitude to every single duty in life?

Thank God I have enough wealth that I have all these dishes to wash, as well as the food that made the dishes dirty.

Thank God for my fussy, crying baby, because it means she’s alive.

Thank God for the laundry I have to do, because it means I have an abundance of clothes, as well as a family to love.

Thank God for my surly boss, because it means I have a job as well as the physical and/or mental faculties to do it.

Thank God for the mud on the floor I have to clean up, because it means I have a husband who loves me and who is willing to do the outside chores on a gray, drippy day.

Thank God I’m changing a baby’s diaper in the middle of the night, because it means I have a wife who’s as eager as I am to raise a loving family.

And so on, ad infinitum. Get my drift?

My epiphany regarding duty.

I have not yet arrived. There are still some days when the duties of life drag me down. The fact of the matter is, we all have days when we wish we could stay in bed all day, vegging out in front of our favorite kind of entertainment and have all our food delivered to us.

However, most days aren’t like that. Most days, I find joy in all my duties. The reason is twofold.

First, I realized this abiding truth of human life: most of life revolves around doing our duty.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, I learned to live in the moment. When you’re taking each moment as it comes, rather than regretting your past or worrying about the future, then your mind is free to access the joy and peace which God has placed within each moment.

And then, we don’t have to need to “find the fun,” as Mary Poppins said, about our jobs. Because we don’t need fun. What is fun, but an activity that raises our serotonin and endorphin levels in the brain? But, guess what?

So does immersing yourself in the joy and peace of the moment.

Duty is not a four-letter word. It’s a part of life, a critical part that provides ample time for you to discover, enter into, and revel in God’s presence.

Peace to you, and may blessing abound in every area of your life.