The capacity to love is tied to being able to be awake, to being able to move out of yourself and be with someone else in a manner that is not about your desire to possess them, but to be with them, to be in union and communion.
Interpretation
True love involves selflessness and genuine connection rather than possession.
In this quote, Bell Hooks emphasizes that authentic love is rooted in a profound awareness and presence with another person. It's not about trying to own or control someone, but about sharing a deep, meaningful connection where both partners are fully engaged with one another in a spirit of union and togetherness.
In practice
This quote can be used in a wedding speech to emphasize the nature of true love.
Privilege is not in and of itself bad; what matters is what we do with privilege. I want to live in a world where all women have access to education, and all women can earn PhD’s, if they so desire. Privilege does not have to be negative, but we have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it.
Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else.
While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.
When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.
Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.
I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society — because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not.
Out of five hundred who speak glibly of love, not one can spell the first letter of his name.
It was my last act of love (first words to her mother in the hospital after her first major suicide attempt)
When you are corn and roses and at rest I shall endure, a dense and sanguine ghost To haunt the scene where I was happiest To bend above the thing I loved the most
How sweet it is to learn the Savior's love when nobody else loves us! When friends flee, what a blessed thing it is to see that the Savior does not forsake us but still keeps us and holds us fast and clings to us and will not let us go!
Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.
I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.
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