Book Review: All About Love

What exactly is love? Is there a specific definition or is love a feeling? Do we have the ability to choose who or what to love? Those were questions I’ve always wondered about but didn’t know the answers to.

In trying to define love, I started reading Bell Hooks’ All About Love: New Visions published in January 2018. I learned so much and am grateful to have gained a better understanding of what love is and isn’t.

Reading All About Love made to question if I truly loved Mark in the early years of our marriage. Back then, many of my actions were not loving with the most glaring being I was highly critical of him. There was that time I berated him for at least 10 minutes for ruining my Zojirushi Rice Cooker. With the help of my amazing therapist, I now understand that was verbal and emotional abuse. Me berating Mark may have felt like the right thing to do in the short run in that I’ve vented my anger and Mark knew he was wrong.

However, in the long run, my berating him over a small matter will not nurture his spiritual growth. In fact, it will likely crush his spirit and make him doubt his own capabilities.

The rice cooker incident happened around 2013 and it wasn’t until around 2019 that I formally apologized and promised that I wasn’t ever going to hurt his feelings and self-esteem over material objects. Since then, I’ve kept my promise and will work hard to continue to do so in the future.

From All About Love, I learned that because many of us come from dysfunctional families that told us because they love us it makes their shaming/verbally abusing/physically abusing/emotionally neglecting us acceptable or that whatever happened was not that bad? We in turn want desperately to believe this because it would otherwise upset our world too much to realize that love was not present in our families. And in believing love was not present then how would we justify the abuse we suffered was acceptable or makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad?

I used to cling to the notion that the abuse I suffered was not that bad. That it was understandable my relatives disregarded my needs because I was a little kid and I was only one person. Why would my late maternal grandparents and maternal uncles stop smoking in the tiny 600 sqft apartment that we all lived in because I complained I was having trouble breathing? Why would they stop playing mah-jong late into the night many nights because I simply wanted to sleep? Why hitting me with a rod was 100% justified if I misbehaved in any way?

All About Love taught me that most psychologically and/or physically abused children have been taught by parenting adults that love can coexist with abuse. That it is easy to overlook the abuse because there is also care and affection mixed in with the abuse.

For most of my life, I overlooked all the times I’d been abused by my parents and relatives. My parents, I’ve forgiven because they apologized and have no longer abused me in any way since 2017.

My aunts, uncles, and father-in-law, I have not forgiven because they still firmly believe it is their right to constantly criticize or scream loudly in my face because they are my elders. They all informed me that they can yell at me if they feel like it and there is nothing I can do to stop them as they are my elders and I’m supposed to defer to them.

This is why instead of reasoning with them and hoping they will change, I chose to no longer interact with them. Reading All About Love helps me understand true love does not coexist with abuse. If I feel abused in any way then I need to start questioning if love is present in the relationship.

My Current Definition of Love: Love is, “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth…Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” – M. Scott Peck