Belle Hooks

I’ve read Belle Hooks' All About Love recently, and I expected a lot from it, considering I’ve heard a lot about how prolific an author Belle Hooks is. I was not disappointed picking up this read, as it took a lot of the thoughts I was feeling and said them with significantly more eloquence. Love is an interesting concept in modern society and Belle Hooks delves into it beautifully. She describes how we are both greedy for love and afraid of it. While it may seem paradoxical, it is a truth many of us live in.

I wanted to communicate some of Belle Hook’s thoughts on love that have stuck with me because mental health is about more than anxiety and depression. It is about more than fighting with our inner demons. It is about controlling our mental diet, about the thoughts that run in and out of our headspace. It’s about curating a mindset that helps serve us when we must face the curveballs life throws our way.

Belle Hooks talks about love as it relates to greed. She wrote in 1999, that money in modernity triumphs over love. This is because of the larger cultural attitudes surrounding love and money. I can’t help but think about how social media has only exacerbated that. The hustler mentality that suggests that financial success determines our worth has only propagated with time. It’s easy to forget about love in the pursuit of money, in the pursuit of a career. The love Hooks is referring to is not just romantic. I think about the amount of time I’ve avoided calling my parents because I was busy with schoolwork. That’s an instance where I put career before love, and if I continue to make that choice time and time again, the love I have in my life will have to move to make space for money. That thought has made me think a lot about my priorities.

Hooks also compares the modern search for love as a selfish one, one where we throw partners away like Dixie cups when they no longer meet our needs. It’s interesting because she also talks about staying with partners for too long when we know that they cannot foster the love we require with us. It brings up the question of when to stay vs when to go. This applies to all different types of relationships. As we grow, I feel like every friendship sees a point where it is fueled by memories instead of love. It’s a hard thing to accept when it does happen. How could we have spilled our hearts to someone only for them to become passing thoughts? I think both extremes of leaving too early and staying too long are responses not motivated by love, but fear. Fear is the opposite of love, and any action stemming from it is in direct opposition to love. 

Hooks talks about love in the spiritual sense, and how so many different religions and schools of thought have a dogma surrounding love. Spirituality in the modern day does not seem to be taken seriously. Love is seen as a frivolous pursuit. Hooks talks about why this secularized, modernized version of love feels empty. Love, under the rules of capitalism and patriarchy, seems to be transactional. Many times giving love seems wrong in the absence of receiving love. That is not to say love cannot exist in a secular world, but rather the motivation surrounding love needs to change for it to be truly fulfilling.