It's communal

 "Love is our true destiny.  We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another."  Thomas Merton

(quoted by Bell Hooks in All About Love, page 223)

Love: NO MATTER

 "We are all mysteriously called to love no matter the conditions of our lives."

This is the call from Bell Hooks in  All About Love.  This is the call on each and every one of us:  No Matter the Conditions - or may I add circumstances of our lives.

(page 219)

Love as a Force

 "Love is the only force that allows us to hold one another close beyond the grave.  That is why knowing how to love each other is also a way of knowing how to die."

page 202

All About Love

Bell Hooks

 "Love empowers us to live fully and die well."

page 197

All About Love

Bell Hooks

Recognition - Acceptance

 The essence of true love is mutual recognition - two individuals seeing each other as they really are."

page 183

"Eric Butterworth writes:  "True love is a peculiar kind of insight through which we see the wholeness which the person is - at the same time totally accepting the level on which he now expresses himself - without any delusion that the potential is a present reality.  True love accepts the person who now is without qualifications, but with a sincere and unwavering commitment to help him to achieve his goals of self-unfoldment - which we may see better than he does."  

page 184

All About Love

Bell Hooks

Love is a decision, a judgment, a promise...

 "In The Art of Loving, [Erich] Fromm repeatedly talks about love as action, "essentially an act of will."  He writes:  "to love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.  If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever.  A feeling comes and it may go."  [Scott] Peck builds upon Fromm's definition when he describes love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, adding:  "The desire to love is not itself love.  Love is as love does.  Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and action.  Will also implies choice.  We do not have to love.  We choose to love."  Despite these brilliant insights and the wise counsel they offer, most people remain reluctant to embrace the idea that it is more genuine, more real, to think of choosing to love rather than falling in love."

page 171,172

All About Love

Bell Hooks

The Eternal Principle: Love is All. Love is Everything. Love is our Destiny

 From Bell Hook's classic, All About Love, she writes:

"A commitment to spiritual life necessarily means we embrace the eternal principle that love is all, everything, our true destiny.  Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to the culture of lovelessness, we still seek to know love."

(page 77)

Love: Noun or Verb ~ Learned or Instinctive

 Bell Hooks in her book, All About Love, is attempting to define love and qualify whether it is a noun or a verb.  She says it well:

"M. Scott Peck's classic self-help book, The Road Less Traveled, first published in 1978...echoing the work of Erich Fromm, defines love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."  ...

"Love is as love does.  Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and an action.  Will also implies voice.  We do not have to love.  We choose to love...this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually."

(page 4, 5)

Love as the Great Intangible

 Diane Ackerman said, "Love is the great intangible....Everyone agrees that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one can agree on what it is....that it can mean almost nothing or absolutely everything."  

(from her book A Natural History of Love, quoted in All About Love by Bell Hooks, p. 4)

Brené Brown's take on Love...

 Reading Brené Brown's book, Atlas of the Heart, she unpacks love with:

    "We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection,"

    "Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can be cultivated between two people only when it exists within each one of them - we can love others only as much as we love ourselves."

    "Shame, blame, disrepect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows.  Love can survive these injuries only if they're acknowledged, healed, and rare."

(page 185)

She concludes by saying, "We need more love between us, but also among us."  To that i say, Amen.