all about love~

As I sit with a mouth ulcer and an injured foot, I was wondering if tonight’s newsletter had to be as sour as I am currently. But then I looked at my tarot cards for guidance (trying times, we are also entering a retrograde soon, so you might wanna start working on this things you’ve been putting away) and I got all that I needed — today’s cards basically said: you must be kind to others or die.

I mean, not like, go die or something, but we must show kindness to people, otherwise we will always be in chaos.

In the middle of the sourness, I was thinking of friendships lost. And a quote by bell hooks came to mind immediately:

“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions.

When the initial falling out happened, nobody wanted to speak to me. I wanted to set things right, but they were adamant that I was wrong and the only way I would pay for the mistake is if they stopped talking to me.

Now I like to picture these “friends” as miserable little shits, but then again, they probably don’t think about me and if they do, not my problem.

But sometimes you look at situations and you think: Damn, we could’ve saved it if we just spoke it out. But nobody does speaking it out. Hashing it out means you have to be vulnerable and nobody is equipped to handle vulnerability or even know* how to be vulnerable.

(*There does not exist a guidebook on vulnerability. But we can understand it more or less like this: I am stating my needs, my wants. I am allowing the other person(s) to look at what I want to say. That’s…..it, I think).

Anyway this newsletter is about establishing a love ethic, something bell hooks emphasises many times in her book, All About Love. The book completely changed my perspective of love. It made me realise that we live in a very loveless, detached world. If we don’t support somebody, how would we expect them to grow?

There’s this notion that you shouldn’t assume everyone is good. And I challenge that by asking, what if people aren’t inherently bad? What if we become bad because of external forces? Of course, you don’t have to agree with me, but there is one thing we should agree on though: love is for everybody.

“Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

And what does a love ethic mean anyway? It means, simply, you building your regimen or system based on the ideas of self-care, self-love and love that you will give others in all sorts of relationships you will have. But the underlying message is simple: be kind.

“A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers — the experience of knowing we always belong.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

She does go into detail and give an example about how sometimes the premonition we have of someone might make the someone feel like the opinion. She uses the example of a friend of hers, who is worried her daughter might spend on “bad things”, whilst the daughter has absolutely no idea what constitutes as bad or good. To her, she has money, she will buy candy and/or probably save up for something else. When you place trust on a person, you must accept that you’re not in control what they do. In fact, if you were to assume someone is going to do something bad, not only is it slightly mean, but it can definitely damage your relationship with that person.

I guess the bigger issue is that we’re scared of placing our full trust onto people or love people fully, where you’re assertive about your needs and them about theirs. We all enter relationships with a set of premonitions and sometimes they are redundant. There’s another quote from the book;

“We fear that evaluating our needs and then carefully choosing partners will reveal that there is no one for us to love. Most of us prefer to have a partner who is lacking than no partner at all. What becomes apparent is that we may be more interested in finding a partner than in knowing love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

Love is meant to be shared in abundance; not like small candies you keep for special occasions. Relationships fail, things fall apart, but there will always be a constant reminder that you’ve loved before and you can love again, always.

Wow, talk about getting distracted. I had no idea what to talk about today, so I thought I’d share some love poems, but All About Love was on my desk and I thought, ‘hm why not encourage everyone to read it?’

You can love. You are loved. You are capable of it. Love is a joy, an action meant to be shared. Not kept for special occasions like our party gowns and fancy jewelry. Find love or make love in everything that you do. Having a love ethic gives you a good foundation against what someone thinks of you, especially if it’s not good. You know yourself. You know you are not someone’s ill-informed opinion of you. But no matter, you must love, love, always love. In small ways, in big ways, in secret or in grandeur. Nobody cares — just love. Practice loving yourself, your peers, encouraging people instead of discouraging them (and yourself).

Love is funny, I think. They say it makes you blind, but I think it makes the world happy. Everytime we love, we make the world slightly more bearable to live in. When we love, we often don’t realize, but we do it with all we’ve got. Maybe that’s funny, maybe that’s why they say it makes you blind but no! Love also means accountability, you care enough about someone to aid them in their growth.

Love is warm and wonderful and everybody deserves it. :)

Sending this with lots and lots of love,

Amulya.