A little over halfway into Bell Hooks’ book “All About Love: New Visions”, and my mind cannot stop reshuffling memories of my past relationships, friendships, family dysfunction, and my own shortcomings when it comes to consistently enacting a love ethic in all aspects of my life.
The book doesn’t only offer a more holistic approach to love in which it centres community and society, but it painstakingly shows how capitalism and an absence of love have slowly chiselled away at our abilities, practices and all the ingredients necessary for love, leaving us with a sense of emptiness even when we believed we found and knew love.
When most of us hear the word love, romance and wedding bells are the things that tend to rush immediately to our thoughts. The idea of love is often only talked about in terms of romantic relationships or parental bonds. It is often seen as a woman’s role of showing, enacting and something that is innate from the moment we were born.
