All about Love: Love Song to the Nation Book 1

In Chapter 3, hooks examines the role of honesty in loving practice. She asserts that “the heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be” (33).

Many people learn how to lie early in life. Often children lie as a means of escaping punishment or to avoid disappointing an adult, and therefore they grow up under the impression that lying “is a way to avoid being hurt and hurting others” (34). These habits are only reinforced when children start to see how frequently adults lie.

Unlike some of her peers growing up, hooks was too frightened to engage in the kind of playful lying that was commonplace on the playground. This was because she associated lying with trauma and abuse because of her father. The only “truly violent episode” (34) between her parents took place over accusations that her mother lied to her father. On another occasion, her father beat her older sister after she lied about going on a date. Yet hooks adds, “While the violence of his response created in us a terror of the consequences of lying, it did not alter the reality that we knew he did not always tell the truth” (34).

As an adult, hooks’s previous romantic partners acted in similar ways, often lying to avoid confrontation. In this sense, lying can be used to wield power. Men are particularly familiar with this strategy, and many employ it in their personal relationships because they are aware that “they can get away with it” (37). Patriarchal society invites men to regard themselves as superior to women and “to do whatever it takes to maintain their controlling position,” even if that involves deception (40). Movies and television shows signal to men that the freedom to break the rules—by, for example, lying—is what defines their masculinity: “[T]o be honest is to be soft” (38). hooks adds that men have gone to even greater lengths to lie as a way to preserve their social dominance as women have gained more social equality.

Most of all, hooks writes, men lie to and about themselves regarding their true selves—particularly the extent to which they too long for love. This estrangement from one’s feelings leads to a struggle to connect, which in turn leads to a refusal to take responsibility for inflicting pain. This can have violent outcomes, as “men seek to justify extreme violence toward those less powerful, usually women, by suggesting they are the ones who are really victimized by females” (39).

Speaking specifically about men and their relationships with women, hooks reminds readers that honesty and trust are the foundations of intimacy; without them, “genuine connection,” and therefore love, cannot take place (41). hooks is mindful to draw distinctions between privacy and secrecy; everyone is entitled to privacy, but “keeping secrets is usually about power” (45).

hooks insists that to cultivate a more loving society, mass culture needs to commit to truth telling. She argues against the notion that the truth hurts; to know love, “we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others” (48).

hooks examines the concept of commitment as it relates to the practice of love. If a person is committed to learning how to practice love, that means they are committed to telling the truth. Being honest lays the groundwork for practicing self-love, which is an essential component of knowing love outside of oneself. Although the axiom “If you do not love yourself, you will be unable to love yourself” (53) is universally known, so many people are “socialized to see themselves as unlovable by forces outside their control” (53).

Part of the practice of self-love involves addressing low self-esteem. This involves looking critically at oneself and reflecting on certain behaviors, patterns, and the past. Through this type of self-reflection, a person can begin to take responsibility for their life and accept themselves, all with the goal of growing as a person and leaning toward love. Simply acknowledging how abuse and trauma have conditioned a person to feel unloved is not enough, however. hooks suggests that readers working toward self-acceptance practice daily affirmations. She wrote daily affirmations at the start of her loving practice and found that doing so “helped restore my emotional equilibrium” (56). Other pillars of self-esteem include asserting oneself, taking responsibility for how a person reacts to systemic and personal trauma, and “living purposely” to ensure that a person devotes their personal and professional time to people and pursuits they love.

To know love, one must commit to the daily practice of loving and accepting oneself. This can be difficult to accept, given that self-love may imply selfishness or narcissism. Nevertheless, hooks encourages readers to give to themselves the love they wish to receive from others. She also warns that people should “not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself” (68). Self-love is the bedrock of all other forms of love; the practice of love both starts and ends with the self.