bell hooks “All About Love: New Visions”
From the first pages of this contemplative masterpiece, bell hooks asks deep, resonant questions plainly, as if you are a small child and she your preschool teacher. In a culture obsessed with sex, she writes, why do we spend so little energy understanding love? As a thought-leader who spent her career writing about the intersection of race, capitalism, oppression and patriarchy, hooks guides us into the murky waters of conversation around love and dives into our collective reluctance to clarify love’s definition.
Love is an action, hooks teaches, and love is as love does. Furthermore, “To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication…” into the action of caring for your own and the other’s spiritual growth.
In thirteen eloquent chapters, hooks unravels the dimensions of love (from parental love to self-love to divine love) while investigating it through different lenses. hooks offers affirmation of her perspective by heartily citing a truly inspirational reading list from Thomas Merton to Toni Morrison. For us death workers, hooks chapter on loss, “Loving into Life and Death”, can stand alone as a short essay on the meaning of love in both death and grief.
At times hooks perched haughtily on her soap box, but overall her strength in this work is the ability to explore one concept, in both its minutiae and from a bird’s eye view. hooks scans the horizon of collective love, in a culture preoccupied with power, and hones in to the individual family systems that repetitively teach this unexamined value.
As I start the day of love today, by cherishing my beautiful family, I turn to the mirror where I’ve copied the affirmation hooks shared in chapter four, her chapter on self-love title “Commitment: Let Love Be Love In Me”: “I’m breaking with old patterns and moving forward with my life.” I feel as if I have a miniature hologram of bell hooks in my pocket today, reminding me of this new vision of love she has gifted me with and my dedication to bring love into the world.
