Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about love. Not the romantic sense of the word, however wonderful and intoxicating that may be, but rather a more challenging notion of love as a guide to how we behave.
It often seems as if there is an unspoken but pervasive idea that love outside of a romantic or familial context is somehow not serious. Certainly, each of the major religions has layered perspectives on love and the forms it takes, but in terms of a more general, secular point of view, we rarely consider it a topic worthy of public reflection. When was the last time any of us sat down with others and discussed the idea of love and the ways in which we try (or don’t) to act with love as our guiding principle?
I am currently rereading all about lovea collection of essays published in 1999 by the black American theorist, writer, and activist bell hooks. In this work, Hooks weaves a conversation about love, both in its individual and collective expression, through 13 chapters that cover themes such as “justice,” “honesty” and “community.”
His concept of love is based on a definition given by psychiatrist M Scott Peck: “the willingness to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. . . an intention and an action.” In the book, Hooks reflects on the possibilities of what it might mean to practice a form of love that disrupts every area of our lives. And in doing so, it also reflects on some of our failed interpretations of love (that love is primarily a feeling rather than an action, for example) and where those ideas originate.
I re-read Hooks’ writings often and have found that this book contains many thoughtful and challenging ideas about the way we think about love as a practice: “Adopting an ethic of love means that we use all dimensions of love:’ care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect and knowledge’, in our daily lives,” Hooks writes.
It is that part of “everyday life” that makes me wonder what this ethic might demand of each of us in ways that might be difficult, and perhaps even painful, but ultimately essential to our well-being and that of others. .
I am repeatedly attracted to the work of 20th century figurative artist Alice Neel, primarily for her insistence on portraying people across socioeconomic divides and her ability to convey our collective humanity in her painting. Neel’s 1940 painting, “TB Harlem,” is a portrait of a sick young man from his own neighborhood of Spanish Harlem in New York.
The subject reclines with a naked torso on a bed with purple sheets; another pale sheet covers him up to his torso. There is a large white bandage over a wound on his chest, which he touches gently with his right hand. His other hand rests next to him on the bedclothes. The brown tones, from the wall to the tone of your skin, mixed with the soft lavender and cream of the bedding, give the canvas a concentrated and seductive warmth. But the figure looks at us with a face that expresses both pain and silent resistance.
The title reveals that he is a victim of tuberculosis. However, there is something about the placement of the bandage, apparently over his heart, and the way Neel has painted the man’s gaze that draws me into his experience, so that I can imagine myself, and therefore any person, in their general condition of suffering.
Each of us is familiar with suffering in one form or another. When I consider what it means to live by an ethic of love in our daily lives, I suspect the first thing we should do is examine how our own hearts are wounded. I sometimes wonder if many of the troubling issues we face in our lives are related to being taught unhealthy ideas about what love is and never questioning those ideas or the resulting behaviors.
It takes courage to review what we have unconsciously learned about love in our early life experiences. And even more courage to try to unlearn ideas that could negatively affect how we love ourselves and, by extension, others. None of us escape this life without multiple wounds in our hearts, but how often do we examine our wounded hearts and to what extent are we able to tend to those wounds? Neel’s painting appeals to me as an invitation not only to imagine our own pain but also to practice compassion.
It’s easy to get trapped in the visual turmoil of “Love Steering the Ship of Mankind,” an 1899-1901 painting by British artist George Frederic Watts. It represents two male figures in a small wooden boat in the middle of a strong sea storm. The water crashes in all directions while the sky seems like a battlefield between dark clouds and swirls of light.
The two figures are personifications of Humanity and Love. Humanity, on the right side of the image, has his hands on a set of oars, but lies motionless, as if he has fainted from exhaustion. Love, meanwhile, is using all its strength to steer the ship. The storm, we suppose, symbolizes the conditions of the world.
I am captivated by Watts’ attempt to represent Love as the savior of Humanity. It makes me wonder about current times and where our current metaphorical ship is headed. The love depicted in this painting is not sentimental. It is a love in action, a love consumed and willing to do brave and exhausting work for the good not only of a group of people but of all people. It makes me stop and think about when in my own life I have experienced love working so fiercely or when I have struggled this way.
“Naima’s Gift (Deon, Kym and Noah)” is a painting from 2023 by contemporary American artist Jordan Casteel. A man and a woman stand next to each other in a garden; The woman holds a child in her arms and plants a kiss on his cheek. It is a beautiful image of a family, complete with the smallest gestures that signify deep love and recognition for each other. Although the man looks out of the frame, we see his hand joining the woman’s to hold the child. Both figures stand, ankle-deep in a flourishing abundance of plant life.
For me, this garden represents an additional aspect of a loving ethic of care, responsibility and respect, in this case for the rest of nature and, by extension, each other. Caring for any type of garden requires our constant attention and an investment in the result. It is a reminder that our seemingly small but daily attempts to live with integrity, to practice generosity of hands and hearts, add up to the ability to stand tall in the gardens of our own lives.
Email Enuma at enuma.okoro@ft.com
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