Duty

A warm welcome back to new and returning students in 2018. At this week’s Middle/Senior College assembly, I spoke to students about ‘duty’. The term duty has become a little old fashioned these days. In our modern society, we seem to prefer mantras such as ‘follow your passion’, ‘do what you love’ and ‘follow your dreams’. However, these types of sayings can sometimes lead people to think, ‘I’ll just do what I want in life and not care about everyone else’.

One major distinction is that passion is often self-serving, while duty is other-serving; whether it’s serving a person, a community, an ideal or God. Rather than asking ‘what is my passion?’ a better question is ‘what is my duty?’. Duties may not seem as glamorous as ‘following your dreams’ but there is also great satisfaction in being a dutiful person and taking responsibility for the bigger things in life, even if it isn’t necessarily a source of immediate pleasure.

I reminded students that it is their duty to work hard here as a student at Pacific and take advantage of the wonderful learning that the College offers. By working hard, students are honouring their parents and carers who make sacrifices to send them here. When students leave Pacific, they also have a duty to act as an agent of change to make the world a better place for all, not just for themselves.

Mr Brendan Delaney, Director of Students