Have you ever been faced with a choice between personal happiness and duty?

Duty offers it’s satisfactions of one kind—one maintains or builds ties with others in one’s community. It could be with the wider community (duty to country) or with family (duty to parents or to children). One may not like one’s parents (or country) but one still serves them for the joys and sense of goodness or for fulfilling one’s sense of obligation and guilt. In any case, duty offers much reward, although it can be rather diffuse, and one might resent doing one’s duty.

Personal happiness—well, that’s pretty much it. It’s personal. Selfish. It might also provide a benefit to others, but primarily the benefit is to you. It might have a very large benefit, such as the opportunity to live with your soulmate.

Sometimes these goods are a zero-sum situation. You can only have one or the other. You can’t have both. You can run off with your soulmate and explore the world, or you can stay home and care for your very sick parents since there is no one else to do it.

Have you ever been faced with such a choice? What was the situation? How did you decide? If you haven’t been in such a situation, what would you do if faced with a choice between taking care of your family (sick parents or children) and spending the rest of your life with your soulmate. You can’t have both. It’s not a matter of waiting. It’s now or never.