स्वधर्ममपि चावेक्ष्य न विकम्पितुमर्हसि ।धर्म्याद्धि युद्धाच्छ्रेयोऽन्यत्क्षत्रियस्य न विद्यते॥
swa-dharmam api cāvekṣya na vikampitum arhasidharmyāddhi yuddhāc chreyo ’nyat kṣatriyasya na vidyate
Word by word
The verse says
And if you look at your own work in the world, you have no reason to waver. For a warrior there is nothing better than a fight that is rightly fought.
In plain words
Krishna changes ground completely. The metaphysics stops and something much more ordinary starts.
Look at what you are, he says. Look at the job.
This is the first appearance of svadharma — your own particular duty. Not duty in general. The one that belongs to you rather than to somebody else.
Where you've felt this · in community
A nurse and a builder are both good people, and what counts as doing well is not the same for either. Swapping their standards would not make either of them better. It would just make both of them worse at what is in front of them.
Going deeper
Svadharma is one of the Gita's central ideas, and it needs care in English.
It is not duty in the sense of a rule imposed from outside. It is closer to the particular shape of obligation that comes with being this person, here, with these capacities and commitments. The Gita will return to it at 3.35 and again at 18.47, both times insisting that your own imperfect work beats someone else's done well.
It is also inseparable, in the text, from the social order it was written inside. Arjuna is a kṣatriya, and that is a hereditary category, not a career he chose. A modern reader has to decide what to carry over from that and what to leave, and pretending the question does not arise would be dishonest.
What survives translation is this: obligations are not interchangeable. You cannot discharge yours by performing someone else's.
And notice what Krishna has done with the word dharmyāt — a fight that is rightly fought. The endorsement is conditional. He is not saying fighting is good. He is saying this fight, fought this way, is the one in front of Arjuna.