Growing up in a family of all girls, I never knew much about boy scouts, other than knowing it wasn’t a group that concerned me. It wasn’t until just recently I even realized what the Boy Scout motto entailed. We received an invitation for an Eagle Scout ceremony in the mail that included the Boy Scout oath, which focused on duty to God, country, others, and one’s self. I found myself wondering if the concept of “duty” was more prominent in another generation. It seems that my peers (20-somethings) make fewer decisions about their lives based on duty than our parents and grandparents did. We are the “Me generation”, carrying a reputation of being more focused on ourselves than others.

My perspective on duty is young and still forming. Through my own experiences and through conversations with friends, it seems as though the younger generation has witnessed too many of our parents and grandparents living their lives devoted to one duty or another, only to realize too late that a great deal of personal happiness was lost along the way.

Completely abandoning duty could have grave consequences. Think about the duty to take responsibility for one’s acts (like paying child support) or duty to keep one’s promises (like finishing a task at work you commit to promising) or participating in community improvement (because you live there with a group and have a duty to at least respect the group).

We need to be careful to not abandon all sense of duty, but I think it is good to take a step back and re-evaluate each situation:

Will I harm others or myself if I do this simply out of duty? I imagine soldiers in war must struggle with this one intensely. Protecting one’s freedoms is a noble cause in deed, but it is hard to reconcile the duty of a harmful act with a value system that calls one not to harm another.

Will the end be ruined if duty is the only thing that gets me there? Perhaps religious duty could fall under scrutiny with this question. The end goal of religion is to be reunited with God individually and as a group, spiritual depth manifested as moral values and well-founded character, and harboring networks of people that can aid each other spiritually and temporarily. If religion is approached simply out of duty, would spiritual growth and faith not be lost in the duty of it? It seems that practicing religion out of sense of duty has the potential to ruin the end goal.

What parts of your lives and your decisions have been governed solely by duty? Have you done something out of duty, and later on been glad you did? Have you done something out of duty, and later on wished you hadn’t? Do you think the roles that duty plays has been diminishing in younger generations? How do duty and sincerity co-exist in relationships, whether mortal or spiritual?