All About Love

When I graduated from undergrad and began my transition into the full-time work force I really found out how much extra time I had on my hands to actually get back to reading for fun. With the new-found time, I was really eager to grow my short-term book list (now a monstrously long book list) to get me started. My good friend, suggested a book called “All About Love” by bell hooks.

All About Love dissects the current, modern ideals of love in American society and how author, bell hooks, has come to identify it through her analysis and education. Hooks meticulously lays out the frame work for an entirely new love ethic driven by what she calls ingredients. She pushes the idea that we do not have to love but we choose to love and that “to truly love you must learn to mix various ingredients; care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, and open and honest communication.”

In the first chapter hooks discusses how as we are young we learn faulty definitions of love. These obscure definitions of love shape how we love others as we grow older. This book is full of insightful quotes from earlier works that serve as evidence to the claims hooks makes in her book.

One thing that stood out to me while reading this book is that bell hooks says that the first mistake we make is believing that love is a feeling. This shattered my reality a little bit. I had to ask myself in that moment, “Shit what the hell is it if it’s not a feeling.” Isn’t love how a person makes me feel and how I feel about that person? M. Scott Peck, Psychiatrist, defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth,” in his book The Road Less Traveled. That quote made odd, but perfect sense. Having the ability to do for someone else for the sole purpose of nurturing them, and/or nurturing yourself speaks to me as actions with pure intent. Think of a time you made a move, the action, with pure intent. As you remember it, does it feel like it came from a place of love? Love is not a feeling it is a verb, an action word. Bell Hooks creates a love ethic that is centered in love being built around action and not feeling.

The idea that love is an action and not a feeling isn’t even a brand-new philosophy. We have all heard the argument before. I challenge you to take it a step farther and see love as not only an action, view love as the universal language, that is best spoken through actions with positive and pure intent at its core. Love is the highest of vibrations to master, it is the souls center and it starts with self.

Chapter by chapter, hooks break down the current ideals of love and how they were shaped. She details the patriarchal society and how the majority of the narratives about love are written by men and from the perspective of men and not very many women. Bell states “Men writing about love always testifies that they have received love. They speak from this position; it gives what they say authority. Women, more often than not, speak from a position of lack, of not having received the love we long for.” “A woman who talks about love is still suspect. Perhaps this is because all that enlightened women may have to say about love will stand as a direct threat and challenge to the visions men have offered us.”

Men, since the beginning of time, have been showered with the unconditional and unbreakable love of a woman. That very love gave men the advantage and authority to manipulate the narrative. You don’t really notice unless its pointed out to you that loves narrative has been so twisted and manipulated by the male point of view. Love is nothing to long for when it is created within us. We have the capability to fill ourselves with the love that society paints us longing for.

It honestly made me sad to even recognize that women generally come from a place on longing than receiving when it comes to love. These faulty notions and misconceptions contribute to the fear that surrounds commitment and vulnerability. The book opened up the perspective of a whole new host of generational curses surrounding love alone. The book makes sense of the draining and unhealthy love cycles we place ourselves in, out of mere lack of understanding and knowledge of circumstances.

Overall the book allowed me as a reader to understand the common misconceptions and narratives about modern love and hoe they contribute and perpetuate how I express and receive love as well. Embrace love as the first response to any and every situation life challenges you to face.

Don’t fear love, don’t fear being loving. Love just because you can, it starts within. There is power in the things that scare us most.

Be true. Be beautiful. & Be blessed.

-B