The Six Parts of Love, Part One
In this series, I break down one component of love. This week's post is about care. And also just a *little* bit about tummy troubles.
Note: From here on out, the tone of A Conspiracy of Kindness will be more natural. I was writing from an academic space instead of the personal space because I was nervous. I’m not nervous anymore, and also, living from a space of vulnerability is what all of this *gestures at this blog, at Theory & Practice* is all about!
One of the things I find simultaneously amazing and infuriating about the English language is its flexibility. The meaning of words can be slippery, indefinite. They give us wiggle room: we might be having a conversation about the same thing, but have completely different understandings of the concept.
bell hooks says that one of the problems when we talk about love is that no one knows what we’re really talking about because we all have a different definition. And then she defines it as a combination of care, commitment, respect, responsibility, knowledge, and trust.
So when The bell hooks Book Club met for the second time in order to discuss the introduction and chapter one of All About Love, I wanted to get concrete. Precise. Because while I wholeheartedly proscribe to her belief that love is a verb that comprises those six things, I wasn’t actually sure what those six things meant. What does each of those things actually look like?
“I care about you,” is something I’ve heard countless times when someone was behaving in ways that did not demonstrate care. I’ve heard it from my father, from my brothers, from romantic partners, from employers, from people I thought were friends—and the words were hollow. Recently, I had to tell someone to stop saying that to me because their behavior completely dismissed or ignored my feelings, and the disparity was quite literally making me sick. A fun fact about me is, when I am unsafe with a person, my stomach goes EVACUATE, WE MUST EVACUATE, and so my body makes me leave the space. It’s a fascinating and gross defense mechanism. Thanks, body!
This person sent me a text saying they cared about me right after they had dismissed my feelings, told me to drop a conversation about the hurt and repair, and stopped talking to me for a couple days. When I got that message, all I could think was, huh???
What part of that demonstrates care? None of it. Thankfully, because of the conflict we were in and because Theory & Practice was about to launch, I was rereading All About Love. The chapter about care was a major wake-up call that put into context so much earlier behavior that I had rationalized as lack of awareness when the behavior was actually care-less.
For example, I lost my dad and oldest brother to suicide a year and one week apart. It was awful. It is awful. And every year, their birthdays are hard—because they should be alive. And the anniversaries of their deaths are hard, because obviously. Last year, I had asked this person to spend evening of the anniversary of my Dad’s death with me. What time did they leave their house? 8pm. By the time they arrived, I was already an hour into the extended edition The Fellowship of The Ring, and I was bawling. This year, I asked them to join me on my brother’s birthday to help me celebrate. We were going to have cake and sing, but we ended up eating cake and singing before they arrived because my friends had to leave. But it was okay, because they were coming over to spend the evening with me, right? No. They showed up, and then immediately left me on my dead brother’s birthday to go have a drink with their alive brother, and they were gone for three hours. I was devastated, and jealous (of them having an alive brother), and grieving. They did not consider what that would feel like for me at all. Care-less, indeed.
In book club, a month after the dissolution of that relationship, we talked about how one of the biggest components of care is consideration. You cannot care about someone or something and not think about how your behavior impacts that person or thing.
The second biggest component, which is me boiling down a lot of what we said in book club, is action. If you care about someone or something, you adjust your behavior to regard that person or thing.
This seems obvious to me now, but it really struck me for the first time in book club. Since is a space filled with people who care—strangers that came together to dive into a text, to be vulnerable together, to question each other, support each other, share stories, laugh, cry, rage together—it is a space of action.
In each session of book club about this chapter, we listed what care looks like. We settled on the following: nurturance, meeting needs (basic and otherwise), checking in, communication, self-awareness, curiosity, and alignments of words and action.
What would you consider aspects of care?
This work consistently reminds of just how incredible my friends are. And I’m going to brag about one of them at the end of each post! Ha! This week, I want to share about my friend Amanda. Amanda and I met in graduate school in 2013 in Southampton, New York. We spent time together for two years almost ten years ago. And every year, without fail, Amanda texts me on the anniversaries of my dad and brother’s deaths to tell me that she loves me and is thinking about me. Every. Single. Year. (That’s 7 and 6 years, respectively) I haven’t seen her in almost ten years and she never fails to check in on me. THAT is care. Amanda, if you read this, thank you for always holding me on the hardest days of my life. Hearing from you on those days and then getting to check in with you makes my heart less heavy. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are so thoughtful, kind, considerate, and generous.