Duty bound

22.03.07

Duty is, according to Wikipedia, the following:

"Duty is a term loosely applied to any action (or course of action) which is regarded as morally incumbent, apart from personal likes and dislikes or any external compulsion. Such action must be viewed in relation to a principle, which may be abstract in the highest sense (e.g. obedience to the dictates of conscience) or based on local and personal relations. That a father and his children have mutual duties implies that there are moral laws regulating their relationship; that it is the duty of a servant to obey his master within certain limits is part of a definite contract, whereby he becomes a servant engaging to do certain things for a specified wage. Thus, it is held that it is not the duty of a servant to infringe a moral law even though his master should command it. For the nature of duty in the abstract, and the various criteria on which it has been based"

There is quite a lot to unravel in that definition, but in applying it to your life, John, it is relatively simple.

You very obviously were a person guided by your own conscience, and sense of obedience towards those in your life that you believed you had a responsibility for - in other words those that made your understand from the expression of their guiding principles (however contorted and erroneous they in themselves may have been) that you owed them something, that regardless of your own desires, needs and guiding principles, you had to serve them first. And that is exactly what you did. While you may have questioned and challenged those assertions made to you about your so-called duty, the pull was too great for you and you always put others first.

With the perfect 20-20 vision of hindsight, it is easy to recognise that in effect, this kind of emotional blackmail worked because as an inherently good person, you failed to even suspect that the motives of others may be nothing more than honest and true. And ultimately, you couldn't extricate yourself from that conditioning and train of thought, even though you were aware that perhaps you were being taken for a fool - constantly.

The question for all of us who knew you is a simple one: how could you not see it? In fact, you did, but you couldn't act upon it. Your own sense of self-worth had been so depleted by the years and years of morally corrupt bombardment and continual harassment, that in the end, you did not have the capacity to muster courage and strength to deny the blackmailer.

Of those that truly loved you John, we are still at a loss as to how, in your final note to us you could feel you had no worth and were not worthy of those that loved you. If anything has become clear to us with your departure, it is that if we talk about worth and value, you were surely the most priceless of all of us and it is we who were not worthy of you.

In the words of your favourite band, you were and are precious to us all.

And we miss you precious man.