Where to find this idea:
All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
Love is precious, yet it’s surrounded by so much cynicism in a world that emphasizes power, career success and the failure of romantic love. But what if we think of love as more than romantic love or what movies, social media and music serve us? What if we see love as our ethic?
A love ethic is a way of living. It’s how we treat everything and everyone — ourselves, our partners, our kids, our friends, a stranger in the street, and a person living a thousand miles away whom we’ve never met, and probably never will, but with whom we still empathize.
In her famous book “All About Love,” bell hooks gives us crucial elements of love — care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect and knowledge (yes, willingness to learn about love). So, imagine these values guiding how we treat others.
A love ethic can guide our private lives and our work. But it can also impact domains like public policy and business that are traditionally ruled by the ethic of domination and power. Embracing a love ethic means choosing a different set of values to live by and organize our societies, which makes love more than an individual thing, it makes love a social thing.
We like to say that we are “in love,” but love is not something we simply fall into or out of. It’s a choice we make every day in how we treat ourselves and others. To adopt a love ethic is to see love as an action-oriented word. Basically, understanding love as a verb, not only a noun. This way, love ceases to be just an emotion (usually affection), and it also becomes a conscious practice that shapes our interactions and influences the world. It evolves into actively loving others, beyond merely feeling love or being loved.
Only emphasizing the feeling side isn’t enough to make for healthy relationships and deeper connections. Love is a transformative action that requires commitment and effort. It demands that we let go of anything blocking us from authentic connection, such as fear, ego, greed and societal expectations. And it requires to be celebrated in all its shapes and forms, now and always.