Obligation. Duty. Expectations. Responsibility. They're all part of the same package. Love is optional. Love, if it comes with the package, makes the whole more palatable, easier to swallow. You can have the package separate from love. You can't, however, have love separate from the package. Because love is commitment -- not a fleeting feeling, not a high, not passion, not desire. We've always been taught that actions speak louder than words, and love demonstrated is beautiful because it is a commitment to the other person's good, the other person's comfort and happiness and well-being, the other person's growth and development as an individual. Yeah, all that.
So love, being commitment, comes with obligation. Duty. Expectations. Responsibility. You love the other in the way they need to be loved. I was thinking about this on my way to the hospital on Thursday to see my grandmother. At 83, she's been diagnosed with breast cancer. On Thursday, surgeons removed the cancer from her body. They think it might be third stage... the biopsy will confirm this.
When I was younger, I hated expectations and always sought to escape them. But I now accept that you can never out-run expectations. They are everywhere, in everything, and cannot be divorced from life as we know it. When you are a child, you are expected to follow the rules of the house and obey your parents. When you are a student, you are expected to follow the rules of the school and do your schoolwork. When you are an employee, you are expected to follow the rules of the company and carry out your duties. When you are a parent, you might set the rules but there are still certain rules to live by and to raise your children by.
It is the unspoken expectations that trip you up. The ones we sometimes wish we could pretend we didn't know, yet can't feign ignorance of because they are so much a part of us and our culture that they really don't need to be said. If my grandmother is in hospital, I visit her. I am the eldest grandchild on my mother's side of the family, and I need to show love and concern. Therefore I visit her.
That I do love my grandma transforms this beyond mere fulfilment of obligation, duty, expectations and responsibility to something more precious and meaningful. This doesn't, however, mean that I am blind to the fact that I am carrying out an obligation, duty, and responsibility. Or that I am actually bowing to the expectations which my grandmother, if not all my other relatives, might have of me. In truth, I am also bowing to the expectations I have of myself.
These expectations are, as I said, shaped by culture. They are inescapable. For my grandmother might say that there is no need to trouble myself to come to the hospital; but if I do come, she knows that it is because I care. Because as much as you might like to flout obligation, duty, expectations and responsibility -- when fulfilled in the proper manner, there is an undeniable sense of rightness, and everybody breathes a silent sigh of relief, not even realising that we had collectively held our breath.
So it is pointless, truly pointless, to rail against expectations. Or to protest that obligation, duty, and responsibility are sterile things. I'd always thought that I would not want anyone to act towards me out of obligation, duty, expectations or responsibility. But sometimes it takes these four things to show us how to express our love. Without them, we'd be cast adrift without an anchor, no point of reference, no guiding lights by which to navigate the often murky waters of human relationships.
