After spending several years thinking, teaching, and writing about neighbor love, I recently concluded that my life was entirely empty of anything of the kind. While routinely performing “works of love” – visits to friends in the hospital, extra office hours with my students, early mornings at the homeless shelter – I was all the while prepared to leave these people if a better opportunity presented itself. By “better opportunity” I meant a lifestyle upgrade. A chance to move somewhere that afforded more professional prestige or pay or culture or natural beauty. In short, personal fulfillment.

That’s why, when offered a better job elsewhere, I decided to stay.