Managing in the Gray

What Are My Core Obligations?

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multiplicity of duties creates serious practical problems. How

do you know what your duties are in a particular situation?

How do you prioritize your duties? And what do you do

when one duty contradicts another? Another layer of diffi-

culty is that we shouldn’t assume we can sort out our duties

in a sensible or rational way. Growing up, most of us learned

a long list of do’s and don’ts—obey your parents, keep your

room clean, be respectful, and so on—and we learned from

parents and other authority figures. Quite often, their strong

voices echo inside us, telling us unconsciously what we should

and shouldn’t do and generating a wide range of feelings.

Even worse, there is very strong evidence that, even when

we ar ...