‘Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing’

In her book All About Love bell hooks includes a chapter entitled Values: Living By A Love Ethic. She is writing with reference to America but I think it translates:

A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and well. To bring a love ethic to every dimension of our lives our society would have to embrace change.… We do this by choosing to work with individuals we admire and respect; by committing to give our all to relationships; by embracing a global vision wherein we see our lives and our fate as intimately connected to those of everyone else on the planet. (2001: 87-88)

Or more briefly: ‘Without justice there can be no love’ (p30). Last year for a possible publication entitled Why We Are Socialists I wrote a short piece. It’s all about love really. I wrote this before I read bell hooks’ book:

In the run up to the 2019 general election I often said (when campaigning both on and off line) that a vote for Corbyn’s Labour was a vote for love; love for humanity, love for the planet and for peace. I stand by all this and find it truly tragic that those with alternative agendas have so much power.

I can attribute my own socialist ideological positionality and sense of self to many influences. My parents showed me every day the value of love and taught me the importance of respect for all peoples. My fee-free, grant-aided, feminist sociological learning as a non-standard higher education entrant of working class origin in my late 20s is relevant also. So too, my second marriage to a long-time socialist who supported me as I refined my own personal, political voice. …..

Not long after my mum’s death I came across the work of Mary Oliver (1935-2019) for the first time. The last lines of her poem The Summer Day have stayed with me ever since:

               Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

               Tell me, what is it you plan to do

               with your one wild and precious life?

I have come to realise that one important legacy of the love and the losses in my life is the need to feel and be useful, the need to love and care for others, as my dearest loved ones love/d and care/d for me. My commitment to socialism and my activism is thus motivated by my desire to work alongside like-minded others for a better world for everyone, including all of ‘our’ children. I want them to have all of the life chances and opportunities that I have had, and more. As long as I live I’ll never give up on this. #Solidarity

Living by a love ethic includes (I think) small acts of care and kindness, as well as grand gestures. A personal example from a couple of years ago:  

A week or so in to [the first COVID-19] lockdown I woke to a note from a neighbour … who I have never met, informing me that she was going to the supermarket that evening and to get in touch if there was anything I needed. When I texted to let her know that I was ‘fine, thank you’, she replied to say that the offer was open any time. When I posted on twitter about some of the problems I (previously had) about securing a food delivery  I received a private DM message from a man who I have never met but regularly engage with online. He wrote that he had a friend living near me who he would ask to do a shop for me if I needed it.

Two further examples I experienced/observed and shared on Facebook last summer:

I visited my parents' grave in Coverack yesterday. On the way I stopped at a shop at the other end of the village to buy a postcard. The server admired my flowers and I told her where I was going. 'Would you like to borrow some scissors?, she asked. Aren't small kindnesses wonderful?

***

Observed another small kindness in a coffee shop in Bath today. An older man with obvious mobility issues and a very stooped back came in to buy an ice-cream in a tub. He choose his flavour and the server asked him if he wanted one scoop or two. Then this happened:

Man: 'Two please, if that's ok.'

Server: 'That will be £5.50 please.'

Man: 'Oh OK, I'll just have one scoop then please.'

Server: '£3 then, I'll make it a generous scoop.'

And she did, she really did

Reference

bell hooks (2001) All About Love: new visions Harper Collins