I knew that I would dive back into All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks the second I finished reading it the first time. During my first reading, I didn't write in the book or put any sticky notes on any pages, which is unusual. When I read nonfiction, I almost always write all over the book. I didn't do that because I knew that what I was reading was important and I wanted the ideas to wash over me without me over analyzing first. I wanted to emotionally react first. I touch on my first reading in this post from the beginning of the year.
If no one minds, I'm going to work out my thoughts to the book in bits and pieces here. It would be great if you share your thoughts with me, especially if you've read the book. Even if you haven't, I'd like to hear from you. Dialogue is far more interesting than monologue.
I think I'm going to proceed by highlighting some of the parts that spoke to me for whatever reason. Maybe a sentence. Maybe a passage. Maybe a question that arose while reading.
The last sentence in the Preface is, "When we love we can let our heart speaks." What immediately came to mind was the idea of fear. What if fear of opening up, especially in a new situation, keeps us from allowing our hearts to speak? I have mentioned before that I'm quite smitten with someone who is younger than me, but I'm terrified to say anything for fear of looking like a foolish old woman. Does this mean that love is not present? I don't know. hooks' sentence feels true to me. Love is liberating. Fear is not.
I underlined several passages in the Introduction and placed several sticky notes next to other passages. I'm not sure where to start. I guess let's start here: "all the great movements for social justice have strongly emphasized a love ethic." I am, as president of a small union, trying to approach my duties as with a love ethic. Love for the members, love for my students, love for the profession of teaching. This is a different point of view than I had 10 years ago when I was not so healthy.
Next is the notion that a woman over 40 who speaks of love is perceived as desperate. This ties directly to the fear I talked about in relation to that younger man. A few pages later, hooks wrote that many people have learned that speaking about love "with any emotional intensity means we will be perceived as weak." In the margins I wrote that I burst into tears while reading this. How sad is it that people might view someone else as weak if they speak about love. But, then again, I'm afraid of being seen as desperate and foolish.
The final part of the Introduction that captured my attention is what she describes as "a callous cynicism that frowns upon any suggestion that love is as important as work, as crucial to our survival as a nation as the drive to succeed. Awesomely, our nation, like no other in the world, is a culture driven by the quest to love ... even as it offers so little opportunity for us to understand love's meaning or to know how to realize love in word and deed." This will make more sense when we get to the definition of love that hooks uses throughout the book -which she reveals in Chapter 1. That will be my next entry.
See you in a few days, unless you leave a comment, which would be great.
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