Eleven Things That I Learned About Love From bell hooks

For the longest, most of my childhood, teens, and early adulthood, I didn’t believe in love.

I fled from love before I could feel its grace.

I thought it was artificial or a fairy tale that people attached to fill some void.

As I’ve grown, where my love-less-ness or lack of belief in ‘love’ would be the end to countless failed relationships, I realized that I was running from the most important type of love. That is love for myself.

I didn’t believe in love because I didn’t believe in the love in myself. I didn’t think I was capable of attaining love because there was a void of love internally. I couldn’t show love because I didn’t know how to show love to myself.

Last summer, I picked up bell hooks All About Love. I was curious, what really is this thing called love? So after reading it and practicing self-love over the past year, this is all that I learned about love:

Love is an intention and an action; “We do not have to love, we choose to love.” The choice to love is to find yourself in others.
Love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
Loving yourself is the action of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility for your spiritual growth. Love is also extending that to others.
Love is the unifying principle of life. It is the glue, the dark space that binds us. Love is the spark that set off the Big Bang. Love is God. Love is the wholeness of life — it is the highest point of value and meaning.
Seeking love and allowing yourself to seek love is a manifestation of divine spirit.
Love is not about maintaining control or holding onto power. Love is how we end oppression and overcome hateful and destructive forces. In hope, there is love.
Self-love is the foundation of the healing process. Acceptance of pain is a part of the process of love. “To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.”
Love is abandonment and entirely giving yourself to each other, even in times of despair.
True love is knowing you always belong. True love is recognition — seeing each other for who we really are.
Love isn’t just set aside or for romantic partners. Love is the foundation with ourselves, family, friends, and everyone we choose to love.
For love to come into our world we have to choose it and admit we want to know love and be loving even if we don’t know how or what it means.

Cynicism can be the most significant barrier to love. For me, it was. I’ve touched and known love even without me knowing it. Yet, through it all, I’ve learned that love is much more. Love is as real as gravity. It’s the force that moves our world.

Through it all, approach love with will and intention, and even in times when love seems afar, love renews our spirit so we can love again.

I have taken steps towards love, the most essential love, self-love. The main lesson that I wish to pass onto you is to acknowledge your need to love and be loved.

It is all love.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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