The weather is going through a phase (warm one day, raining and everyone seems to either be getting broken up with, breaking hearts, or re-evaluating if their relationship is actually worth the Valentine’s Day expenses- in a nutshell, we are coming towards the end of Cuffing Season. Receiving and giving love is amazing, but to be honest, some of us need to learn how to love ourselves before applying to like or love someone during Cuffing Season.
Loving myself has required a lot of unlearning of old habits that I saw growing up, and I was only able to learn those things through books. Growing up, most of us received love in a specific way and we believed that was the only way that we were supposed to express love. At some point, we begin to question if our parents’/guardians’ way is the only way to love. Without any knowledge on how to express our doubts and questions about love, we become stuck in the only way we’ve been taught to love or the only way we’ve experienced love (even when it’s not love). Through books, I found the words that normalized my preference of donation to a charity as a gift over a bouquet of flowers. I learned how to express my need to go into relationships without rules or societal conventions, because I cannot fathom someone telling me that I have to express love becuase “that’s just how everyone does it.” And through books about love, I was assured that I am not obligated to love anyone or anything, except myself and that my process to improve myself is an active display of love not selfishness. I learned that love can be empowering and also destructive through experience but I learned that showing love to someone is all about their perception-you can’t show love to an introvert by being around them all the time. So, in the spirit of showing love as an act of service, I asked people from the ages of 24 to 56 (and my oh so loving momma) the books that impacted their view of love and here is the most loving book club.
“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
The Alchemist: I have read this book twice, at very pivotal points of my life when I was about to make decisions regarding who to commit my time to and how to pursue my purpose. It approaches the pursuit of your purpose (or calling as some might say) from a spiritual and psychological perspective that gives you the realization that your greatest act of love to anyone is to allow them to pursue their purpose and your greatest act of love to yourself is to give yourself the permission to make mistakes, to take risks, to work hard, and to believe that you can achieve your purpose.
“Part of the reason relationships and friendships can be so difficult for me is because there is a part of me that thinks I have to get things just right. I have to say the right things and do the right things or I won’t be liked or loved anymore.”
Hunger: A Memoir of My body: At some point, we all go through moments of self-consciousness when we pick apart parts of our bodies that we want to reshape/work on/are insecure about. I believe that one of the first steps into loving ourselves is earning the approval of the image that we see when we look in the mirror. This book does an incredible job of breaking down the mental, spiritual, psychological correlation between the love of our physical bodies and our love for our overall selves and others .
“Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another. Committed bonds cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. Most of us are unclear about what to do to protect and strengthen caring bonds when our self-centered needs are not being met.”
All About Love: This one is a controversial one, because it contains quite a few gender based generalizations and dated theories that made me roll my eyes. However, if you can ignore the gender generalizations (easy to ignore because they don’t add any significant value to the context of the book), you can see that this one is more of a brutal honest truth about love in all relationships- romantic, before/after a breakup, with family members, (biological and chosen), with our community, with the less-privileged, and with ourselves. Also, unlike a lot of books that discuss love from the lens of adults, this is one of the few books that discusses the effects of the display of genuine love (or lack thereof) to children on their development into adults; treating children as rational beings not as subjects that should be controlled.
“Many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
Love (Toni Morrison): I couldn’t write a post about love without an honorary mention to the woman who exposed me to the possibility of the grueling, rewarding work of love. In her twisted way of writing, Toni uses this book to show the difference between domination disguised as love and genuine love. The difference between cathexis and love and the importance in knowing whether someone is simply important to you or whether you love them, because both don’t always overlap.
“Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, and its selfishness is its beauty…. People with no imagination feed it with sex — the clown of love. They don’t know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that — softly.”
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