bell hooks has me thinking about love
❤️ Based on the first chapter of All About Love: New Visions ❤️
I borrowed bell hook's book All About Love from my local library the same day my sister brought home her own copy. I think it is serendipitous that we both found ourselves reaching for the same book in different places, on different shelves; my copy kindly cracked by many hands, hers pristine in its fresh factory sheen, but both books brimming with knowledge that we needed and searched for, even without discussing it with each other.
Love in modern times (in the description of bell hooks) is an interruption that my generation is fearful of and cynical toward. Dating apps and social isolation don’t help, and I think, of course, there is a widening ideological gap between heterosexual people.
Gender dynamics and patriarchal values continue to be something that warps and bows under the pressure of societal discontent, it seems. And so when we talk about love, all the while we are inundated by the rainfall of information in the forms of online dating choices, celebrity gossip and breakups, warfare, crimes, and the activity of our friends, how can we truly feel like love is a solution to pain when it feels all the more just an idealized concept reserved for magical pairings, cinematic plots, and fabricated social media posts?
On the other hand, I feel profoundly that our generation is not any different from previous generations in wanting and chasing love. Like many, I have been shaped more by Disney, mythologies, and fairytales than I had realized before writing this. A whimsical wonder for love lingers between each beating of my heart.
Still, these stories have instilled in me a curiosity for love that later was shaped by my desire to understand people. I think back to two books that opened my eyes to a language I hadn’t even realized I hadn’t had the words for: Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (1999) and Gordon W. Allport’s The Nature of Prejudice (1958). These books helped me express my desire to understand people. I believe this desire stems from my curiosity about what shapes our worldviews, actions, and treatment of one another. And what these two books helped form in my mind is that people are wired to crave belonging. We are social creatures who attribute our self-regard to the identities we present and the placement of our ego. So, in seeking love, we seek visibility, esteem, and belonging to someone, to something bigger than ourselves ❤️
Love is no more alien to us than it may look in comparison to previous generations—look how we write and use technology to romanticize our lives, the ability to record ourselves, create posts, and curate certain poses. I think it is such a human need for validation and appreciation because it isn’t said that to be seen is to be loved. If we paint ourselves with a certain outlook, we choose to appreciate our lives in the way we want others to look and love us ❤️