Default to Duty

 So, I'm back to one of my earlier strands of thought. This idea of self determination versus fate or destiny and to what extent these two overlap or dovetail, or don't. I've just gotten up from a cosmic smackdown. Yup. I'm against the ropes catching my breath. I tried to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee but my Cosmic Dance Partner wasn't having it.

The CDP has very definite ideas about what steps I should be taking and when I get too creative, he/she/it reminds me that I'm not in charge. What the CDP seems to uphold as far as my initiative is duty-driven activity. If I'm doing duty or, even better, double-duty - then voila there's a yellow brick road and I can sashay or rhumba or cha cha  to my heart's delight.

But when I set off on some little side trip, we've got trouble - a la the aforementioned smackdown.
The smackdown itself is a curious, unfathomable thing.
I don't get hurt. Not really. I just get neutralized. I get a 'game over' screen and I'm right back where I started. The music just stops.  Its like you roll the dice and draw the card that says: Go to jail, go directly to jail... When the new game screen comes up, I usually hit the 'duty' button in a hurry.

My life hums along when I'm doing the big D which includes all the motherly, wifely, jobly, and gardenly things that I've signed up for - or that fall into my lap for my attention.

I have tried to change my life a few times: or add some things that I thought would enhance my life experience, but they've never stuck. Maybe through lack of will or perseverance, frustration, bad luck, bad timing or, sometimes via the good old smackdown - I've been 'delivered' from these 'distractions' from duty. Some examples of non-duty activities: the yoga kick I was on for 6 years, the poetry kick I was on for about 12 years, an outrageous plan to leave my family for 3 months and just be alone - these things, have come to naught. Or the pinnacles I imagined I'd reach, just weren't reached, or didn't exist, or were shrouded in cloud...or, who the hell knows.

There is a sense of resignation at this point - that nothing outside of certain parameters will be supported or condoned by my CDP. So, making lemonade, I reason that its for the best, that I'm probably being protected from unseen and unknown dangers, that my duty is my destiny, so why fight it?
It's a good life all told, and I am happy when I view it as such, though sometimes it just doesn't feel like mine. So, if I want smooth sailing I say: Give me duty or give me death!        But on the inside its more like a rumble from the belly of the Amistad: Give us frickin' free.