“Love is challenging in all its forms. Familial love, love in friendship, love in romance. Love in our relationships with ourselves. There are all sorts of definitions for love, all sorts of ideas about what love is. In All About Love, bell hooks talks about love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”. I like that definition, it sounds right. And simple enough in the way a definition of love off simple.
Only it isn’t simple at all. Because in order to extend one’s self for anyone’s spiritual growth, including one’s own, one has to first be capable of extending one’s self, and then be willing to choose to do so.
And extending oneself, for the purpose of anything, let alone love, is really fucking scary.” — Mia McKenzie