defining love

​defining love (a winter love hangout)

​This, defining love, is the first of nine winter love hangouts. We start with a brief text, but it's not a book club, not literary criticism; it's an entry point into a conversation among friends, (even if this is our first time meeting), about what we think and feel about love.

​So far, these dates are inspired and informed by the work of bell hooks, Prentis Hemphill, Sonya Renee Taylor, Loretta J. Ross, Sharon Salzman, Jeff Warren, Barbara Kruger and Cole Porter.

​Also, I think the text could be in any medium.

​"As a society we are embarrassed by love. We treat it as if it were an obscenity. We reluctantly admit to it. Even saying the word makes us stumble and blush... Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we might fight or die, and yet we're reluctant to linger over its names. Without a supple vocabulary, we can't even talk or think about it directly." —Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love

​Until I read a definition in bell hooks' book, all about love, I hadn't noticed what Diane Ackerman points out above, that I hadn't defined it at all, and that probably most people haven't. Or if they have, they kept it to themselves, maybe figuring that everyone had the same view of it.

​"'Love is as love does. 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."

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

​How do you define love?

​There is nothing to prepare for us to hangout. Though, you may also feel inspired to pull out your favorite texts about love in advance of us getting together, and that's cool too. Either way, it'll be great to hang out with you and talk about love.

​with much care and interest,
—Alex