I think I will opt to keep the word - but with a mindfulness!! Perhaps because I'm a lover of language and it has puppy dog eyes I can't out it to sleep, maybe because I'm not yet fully of the belief it's better dispensed with. Your so right about different cultures some of which are built on obligation, I think carefully about that too.
I have my inlaws coming to stay at the weekend, I still live in a heavily asian community and they come from an all white community - this is my home, my husband moved to my growing up turf. On Friday night the chinese friends (also take out shop) will fill their obligation and cook more carefully having said they will make the finest food in our city for my husbands parents - because we are friends, because to them it's an honour to share the obligation of visiting inlaws - of course they've asked us to bring his parents when the food is collected!! With the take out food in hand my inlaws will be introduced to our pakistani friends in the kebab shop, I KNOW what will happen, a game of cat and mouse as they offer to cook free food, on the saturday D is keen to take his father to the hardware shop - the same will be repeated from the two bearded brothers, strict muslims who have a picture of Ghandi hanging above a prayer in their shop. When I travelled I got adopted as little sister or big sister and with that came obligation - not hard to fill, where I was big sister it was to give advice, where I was little sister it was to be advised - oh and wear a long skirt in the street (this last one I chose because I could see the difficulty in introducing me as family while I was wearing what seemed to be almost no clothes like the other travellers!!).
As I make my house ready, partly because I have my own sense of pride and belonging to cultures that have helped teach me, partly because my own culture is to be generous with a guest - the obligation is a valuable part of belonging. I will enjoy and celebrate it - sharing that matters just as family is introduced to me I 'must' introduce family - just as a friends family is my family, my family is to be shared with friends.
When I iron a shirt, cook a meal, or wash underpants - it's making a gift, so my attention is never a waste.
In the first week having stopped or it might have been the last week D drank the men in the kebab shop talked about marriage - about their culture and ours. They asked D some very hard questions, they spoke passionately about obligation but not as though it was a negative thing but instead an expressive language of love and respect. They also know their culture has done wrong things - as many as ours but we're all much the same in figuring out what WE want to keep, how WE want to live and it was that they were talking about.
Did you know in Sinhala (Sri lankan) want and need is the same word? There is no split concept. In trying to explain the differences between the word and hearing the argument that they are unneccessary I learned a lot.
There are two sides to obligation, the pride and the kindness my inlaws will be shown because of a very much wanted obligation is certain to excede considerably what the family I was born into will show.
On saturday night our friends (white and asian) will gather, eat curry out and share in family.