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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MORE RESOURCES

→ Last week I accidentally linked my own YouTube channel when referencing “probably my favorite YouTube channel right now.” It isn’t, trust me I don’t watch my own videos in my free time, I’m usually sick of looking at my own face by the time I’m done editing. So, my mistake! Here’s what I meant to share, it’s a channel called “Pursuit of Wonder” and they are fantastic.

→ More reading on the Bhagavad Gita

→ My latest video, an update on the future of my channel, where I reveal where I am moving (not the US).

Thanks for reading!

Nathaniel Drew