If love is a verb, and so is control, and so is coerce, and pressure, and so is guilt, and neglect, and deny is also a verb, and so is ignore, and manipulate, as well as threaten, and love has been taught to us as a verb often including all these other verbs, then what does it mean to love as a practice, to live with love as a central tenet of our way of being in the world?
A culture of domination and control, of competition and coercion, is one of commodification and transactional relationships — because I give you this, you now owe me that. It is a culture of territories and property: this is (you are) mine, I claim ownership.
So if we are going to live anchored in love, then we also have to examine where our definition of love is rooted in systems of domination and control. We have to pull them up, from the root, which is, after all, what it means to be radical. Radix: To go to the root.
At the root of a practice of radical love: (all types of love, not just romantic):
If I love you, I do not own you.
If I offer you love, you do not owe me anything in exchange.
If I love you, I do not control you.
All of these are pretty things to write and easy to say, but they run counter to the learned beliefs that came to us in so many implied ways: that respect is actually deference, that to give someone what we call love means we are owed love in return, and that if I love you, this means certain behaviors are required of you, and to show you love me, you will let me control you — which, lest this be used to as fuel for a gaslight, is different than having boundaries and holding them as the sacred container they are.
We are living in hard times. We need to love each other fiercely.
But the definitions of love that many of us have been raised into, of love as kin to control, and ownership, and tit-for-tat, can’t be the scaffolding we grow our love on.
We’re going to need each other, in radical ways, to get through. We’re going to need to rebuild a relationship with the earth, to return to being part of the world rather than owners of it.
We’re going to need to remember that love is a verb, and so is practice, and free, and open, and liberate, and unburden, and grow.
And hold accountable is also a verb, and so is learn, and teach, and trust, and tend, and care, as well as believe, and release, and dream, and so is aspire. And it takes effort to love in this way.
We’re worth the effort it takes to love well.
