defining love

alex · January 15, 2022, 5:04pm

defining love (a winter love hangout)

This, defining love, is the first of nine winter love hangouts. We start with a brief text, but it’s not a book club, not literary criticism; it’s an entry point into a conversation among friends, (even if this is our first time meeting), about what we think and feel about love.

While we start with a text, it’s not a book club, not literary criticism; it’s an entry point into a conversation among friends, (even if this is our first time meeting), about what we think and feel about love.

So far, these dates are inspired and informed by the work of bell hooks, Prentis Hemphill, Sonya Renee Taylor, Loretta J. Ross, Sharon Salzman, Jeff Warren, Barbara Kruger and Cole Porter.

Also, the text could be in any medium.

“As a society we are embarrassed by love. We treat it as if it were an obscenity. We reluctantly admit to it. Even saying the word makes us stumble and blush… Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we might fight or die, and yet we’re reluctant to linger over its names. Without a supple vocabulary, we can’t even talk or think about it directly.” —Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love

Until I read a definition in bell hooks’ book, all about love, I hadn’t noticed what Diane Ackerman points out above, that I hadn’t defined it at all, and that probably most people haven’t. Or if they have, they kept it to themselves, maybe figuring that everyone had the same view of it.

Here it is—

Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he [M. Scott Peck, in the classic self-help book, The Road Less Traveled] defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” — ALL ABOUT LOVE, by bell hooks, p.4-5

How do you define love?

There is nothing to prepare for us to hangout. Though, you may also feel inspired to pull out your favorite texts about love in advance of us getting together, and that’s cool too. Either way, it’ll be great to hang out with you and talk about love. Register here

alex · January 21, 2022, 5:15pm

I’ve been thinking about love (duh!) and going over my notes, the reading in ALL ABOUT LOVE that I think I’ll share to open today’s winter love hangout… when I opened Atlas of the Heart (by Brené Brown) to her love section, which also sources ALL ABOUT LOVE, but stays in noun land, whereas bell hooks opens up verb land — and this is where bell hooks blew me away (why I’m investing in nine love hangouts without anyone saying they were into it)

…Brené says very little about love, (I haven’t read through much of the book - only the stressed vs overwhelmed section and that gave me much more to go on, so we’ll see) but she did point to another researcher, Barbara Fredrickson and that’s what I want to share with you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHoEWUTYnSo

She focuses in on micro-moments passing between people and how that relates to your physiology and mine (if we’re the people in this scenario) - it’s a mutually affecting positive physiological experience: love.

As someone in the midst of a few cardiological tests, listening to The Body Keeps Score when I’m on the treadmill (so this is taking time) and deeply interested in activating interconnectedness in my life and being (but not knowing how — all my ways lean solo, problem-solving sense-making helpfulness, but always kinda separate), and with embody as my guiding word (for 2022), my curiosity is piqued.

If you watch it, can we talk?