Love often requires going through the desert, in which you do not feel like loving. Obligation also makes you do what you do not feel like doing. Love is good and obligation is bad (those words used in this paragraph). When we love in the desert, we still love, with who we are, although with what we are, we do not want to love. But when we do things out of obligation, we feel like not doing what we do out of who we are. Why do we act out of obligation? Perhaps out of fear for ourselves or out of our own hungers, or maybe other reasons. A test for whether you are doing good out of desert love, or out of obligation: do you resent what you do? Generally, love does not resent the difficulties and sacrifices that go with it.
It is better to choose desert love over obligation, and, I guess, counterintuitive though that sounds, it is entirely up to our free choice as to which we choose. "Who we are" is somehow entirely within our power to shape, although it doesn't feel like it. Perhaps there is a certain level of service that "what we are" can sustain, and given that, it is entirely up to us whether we pursue it out of love (including desert love), or out or obligation.
(When you love someone or something for long enough, you will enter periods of the desert, where it doesn't feel good or you don't feel like remaining committed. If it is only "what you are" that doesn't feel like it, then that's fine (although subjectively it's hard and can be hard practically as well). But if "who you are" doesn't feel like doing good, that is not such a good thing. Perhaps if you intend to love someone or something, you may at first obligate yourself fakely. But that is not so bad, since really you ("who you are") want to love.)
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