Love cannot be made a duty; the moment you make it a duty it becomes artificial, superficial. Then it is not even skin deep. The father says, “Love me because I am your father.” They are giving reasons why the child should love them, as if love needs any reason. They are not creating a situation around the child in which he spontaneously flowers into a loving person; they are enforcing the idea.
If the child does not feel love, naturally he feels guilty because he does not love the mother or the father and that is bad, it is not how things should be. He starts feeling condemnation for himself. And if he tries to love just to avoid guilt, then he knows it is just hypocrisy; but he has to learn the hypocrisy because he has to survive. It is a question of life and death for him. Then he has to love the brothers and the sisters and the uncles and the aunts. He has to love them and he completely forgets that love could have been a natural growth. Now it is a duty, a commandment to be fulfilled, so he goes on doing it. It becomes an empty gesture. And this becomes a pattern for the whole of his life.
