"With Duty in Mind"

This post is dedicated to Mary McCue.  Mary was an incredible friend, colleague, and mentor.  She lived a life full of compassion and grace with a deep sense of duty to her family and the rest of humanity.  Rest in peace Mary.


April 28, 2011

"With Duty in Mind" is the motto for West Point's Class of 1999.  It is inscribed on our class crest.  If the motto ever slips my mind, it will come to me again on days like today when our alumni association sends out an email advertising Class of 1999 merchandise.

If you're interested, they've got "With Duty in Mind" scrawled across everything from ball caps, to golf shirts, money clips, to tie tacks.  If you're considering buying any product that legal and non-perishable, I'm sure there's a way to get a version with our class motto on it.

While I can poke fun at the marketers all day.  The reality is that duty really was always on your mind during those four at the Academy.  Duty seemed to emanate out of the gray granite walls and rise like steam off the the asphalt in Central Area.  Duty coated us like the humidity rolling off the Hudson River and dropped down from above like snow from the gray January sky.

We had the duty to have our hair cut in a certain way.  The duty to have our shoes shined and rooms inspected.  It was our duty to keep our grades up and our two-mile run times down.  If you ever had any doubt about the scope and specifics of your duties as a cadet, you could always find the answers in the the United States Military Academy Regulations.  The regulations were as thick as my hometown phonebook and they were detailed enough to specify which direction a cadet's toothbrush should point in their medicine cabinet.

After over a decade out of West Point, it's hard to even imagine trying to live life again according to the duties outlined in that massive book of regulations.  That concept is still fodder for the occasional "back at West Point" nightmare.  That's close enough to going back for me.

But on the other hand, I believe that there is something powerful to the statement "With Duty in Mind."  There are few things more powerful than a life lived with sense of duty or few things sadder than a life lived without.

Everyone develops a purpose or justification for existence.  Personally, I believe that our purpose is intrinsically tied to duty.  More specifically, the purpose of our lives is to humbly fulfill our personal duty to the Divine, ourselves, our families, our fellow humans, and the world that was created for us.

Naming the purpose of life is a tall task, especially for someone who was lucky to get out of their college Philosophy class with a B-.  Thankfully, there was higher power that spoke to the issue and I just took the cliff notes.  The foundation for this statement is taken from what Jesus called the two greatest commandments and a line from Genesis describing people's duty in Eden.

• "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." Matthew 22:37
• "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Matthew 22:39.
• Man's duty to "cultivate and care" for creation. Genesis 2:15.

Each individuals specific duties vary with their talents and abilities.  As described by Jesus, "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more." Luke 12:48.

The nature of each individual's duty will also vary.  We're not all called to be Mother Theresa and care for the poor on the streets of Calcutta, but we are all called to fulfill our duties.  The nature of those personal duties is a matter of discernment.  Personally, I think that this is the hardest part.  The world pulls us in so many directions.  We really need help in figuring out how to set those key priorities and tasks.

I don't think that this statement of purpose is that profound and I don't think it's exclusively Christian, but I think it's important out another specific example from Scripture because the nature of our duties has been convoluted, oversimplified or misstated so many times by members of the Christian community.

In speaking about Judgment Day, Jesus said that He will tell the righteous, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me." Matthew 25:34-36

The righteous will ask when they did those things for Jesus.  He will respond, whatever you did for someone in need you did for me. Matthew 25:40.

Jesus puts it point blank in that passage.  The only ones of us that will deserve a final, lasting reward are the ones who fulfilled their duties to their fellow man.

It's a tall order and none of us will fulfill those duties every day, but we've got to try.