The Deeper Wisdom of Our Responsibilities

 Most people see that the purpose of their life is to fulfill a series of predefined commitments, roles, responsibilities, etc. This view about life does fit very well with a Confucian view, where people are realizing their own benevolent nature through the fulfillment of their relationships in life. While I think these relationships are important, I can't help but think that they are important insofar that they teach us the deeper wisdom of life, such as impermanence, letting go of the self, surrender, loyalty,and so on. If I take my position at work as an example, I can either see the purpose of work as to fulfill that particular duty "perfectly" (and thus getting a plaque on the wall beside me!), another way of looking at it is that work is the application and revealing of deeper wisdom. Not only do I finish a task, but I also learn that tasks are not to be clung to: they do change over time, just as the waves do.
   If I am not able to see my responsibilities and roles as "revealing" wisdom, I get caught in the trap of identifying myself with them, not realizing that even the risk of losing such roles and privileges is also a teaching in itself on suffering. Without the ability to stay in one place and to be securely in a job, I could not learn insecurity and the losses that are inevitable. I only see "doing well" as beautiful and valuable, rather than seeing the cracks in my knowledge as equally valuable. It's what I don't know or cannot know or fully realize that reveals the vastness of all that there is.
   The interesting thing about one's responsibilities is that it is not exactly a predictable response. Think about it in this way: responsibility comes from the word "to respond", but we often take responsibility in the opposite way, as a kind of predictable set of instructions. Responsibility is more akin to responding to the changing moment, not a kind of fixed set of directions. To truly take responsibility requires a kind of loosening of one's tendency to react or to "follow orders"; it takes an insight that there are no perfect arrangements and that we work best when we are not welded to preconceptions.