All About Love
As Bell starts writing All About Love, she notes that Love is always termed as a noun, whereas it is appropriate to refer to Love as a verb. Bell Hooks is a famous feminist, scholar, and cultural critic who explains the deeper meaning of Love in her book. The book defines the true meaning of societal lovelessness and tries to magnify what Love is among different people. The author depicts how the society does not show the need to learn loving and it is only infused in sexual desires. Bells continue with the elaboration of the sacredness of Love, the redemption path that leads to the healing of broken individuals, hurt by loved ones. All About Love confirms how great Hooks Bell is for society. The aim is mainly to change the mindset of Love in people and teach everyone how to love without doubting and hurting sincerely.
Bell proposes Love that has a ground of forgiveness, affection, commitment, respect, trustworthiness, and caring. She is criticizing Love based on flaws, ego, traditions, stereotyping, control, and anger. The book focuses on forgiveness and intrinsic Love.
In the book, the author includes her personal experiences with philosophy-oriented and psychology ideas to shape the thinking of people and criticize society for underestimating the impact that Love has on the community. The right meaning of Love is absent in the culture because there is no universal definition. People only think that Love is by word of mouth, but it is beyond what an individual feels. Love is more of action than words -what you do defines whether you love a person or not. The need for a universal definition of Love is crucial because Love is more of an interactive practice. Hooks states that the modern-day meaning of Love shows how society has shunned it, and Love cannot exist where there is a struggle for power among leaders.
All About Love, focuses on transforming and reconstructing Love. Other issues analyzed are the roots of the problems in society that cause people to hurt and fight against each other. For instance, American men are brought up to see how valueless Love is and learn to mistrust people. On the other hand, the girl child is taught more about her feelings and to please society. Boys grow into adults who do not believe in Love or loyalty and are not ready to show any feelings for the people they love. The generation ends up with people who believe so much in lying as a defensive mechanism. Hooks believes in Love, and she wants people to trust the process of genuinely caring about each other.
All About Love shows a vision of how possible it is to love and forgive people. Love is a crucial thing in romantic relationships, friendships, and the community at large. If the society embraced Love, the whole world would be a better place to live because rivalry for power would be non-existence. Love is a lifestyle; hence, everyone should learn how to love themselves unconditionally. When an individual learns self-love, the inner love projects to loving others with the same measure. Loving means forgiving and standing other people’s weakness and flaws. The goal is to change the meaning of Love through action; the change will start from an individual. Let’s spread Love everywhere we go!