Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.
Interpretation
Love cannot exist alongside abuse or neglect, as genuine care and affirmation are essential foundations of love.
This quote by Bell Hooks emphasizes that love is incompatible with abuse and neglect. It asserts that true love is built on principles of care and affirmation, highlighting that any actions reflecting abuse or humiliation undermine a claim of love. Hooks argues that love requires a nurturing environment, and one cannot genuinely express love while engaging in harmful behaviors towards another.
In practice
This quote can be used during discussions about healthy relationships in a counseling session.
Privilege is not in and of itself bad; what matters is what we do with privilege. I want to live in a world where all women have access to education, and all women can earn PhDβs, if they so desire. Privilege does not have to be negative, but we have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it.
Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else.
While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.
When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.
Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.
I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society β because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not.
Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking_x000D_ Can't we give ourselves one more chance_x000D_ Why can't we give love that one more chance_x000D_ Why can't we give love_x000D_ Cause love's such an old fashioned word_x000D_ and love dares you to care for_x000D_ The people on the edge of the night_x000D_ And love dares you to change our way of_x000D_ Caring about ourselves_x000D_ This is our last dance_x000D_ This is our last dance_x000D_ This is ourselves_x000D_ Under pressure
When I can no more stir my soul to move, and life is but the ashes of a fire; when I can but remember that my heart once used to live and love, long and aspire- O, be thou then the first, the one thou art; be thou the calling, before all answering love, and in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.
You carry away with you a reflection of me, a part of me. I dreamed you; I wished for your existence. You will always be a part of my life. If I love you, it must be because we shared, at some moment, the same imaginings, the same madness, the same stage.
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. _x000D_ Where there is hatred, let me sow love, _x000D_ Where there is injury, pardon; _x000D_ Where there is doubt, faith; _x000D_ Where there is despair, hope; _x000D_ Where there is darkness, light; _x000D_ And where there is sadness, joy. _x000D_ O Divine Master, _x000D_ Grant that I may not so much seek _x000D_ To be consoled as to console, _x000D_ To be understood as to understand, _x000D_ To be loved, as to love.
And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.
He felt all the torment of his and her position, all the difficulties they were surrounded by in consequence of their station in life, which exposed them to the eyes of the whole world, obliged them to hide their love, to lie and deceive, and again to lie and deceive, to scheme and constantly think about others while the passion that bound them was so strong that they both forgot everything but their love.
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