After talking to a good friend, I have come to realize, and I have probably known this before, that love is synonymous with fear. It is also synonymous with the inability to fully surrender to vulnerability and pain. This in turn, leads us back to our fear of even accepting “painful love” as a constant presence in our lives.

The quote in the title of this essay is taken from Bell Hooks’ new book All About Love: New Visions. Her text inspired me once again to talk about the fact, what she describes as, a phenomenon that popular culture today, especially mass and social media, shows and breeds people to be non-believers of love. A lovelessness prevails our cultural identity and transforms us into beings, who are unable and unwilling to open their hearts and let love in.

All the while, this may sound super cheesy. Yet, the urgency to talk about this topic as much as we can, is so important today, many do not even realize inhowfar this is actually the case. As Hooks notes that “[y]outh culture today is cynical about love” and follows with the statement that “that cynicism has come from their pervasive feeling that love cannot be found”. Thinking about love’s state in our lives saddens me; because its effects are seen everywhere and all over media.

I want to link back to the conversation I had with my friend. We have talked about love a lot, although we haven’t known each other for a long time. She and I bonded over our mutual interests in North American History and shared passions for internationalism and interculturality. However, we quickly started talking about love and life in general, without judgement or holding back. Naturally, I am very open and honest about my encounters, failures, and successes with love. So I have been the same with her, just only a tad bit more reserved; in the sense that I didn’t want to bombard her with my experiences, and rather listen to hers and learn from her. As I don’t know her all too well, I was curious how she sees the world and perceives, accepts, and maybe even denies love in her life.

Our conversation quickly turned emotional and she even shed a few tears while talking about a lost love. Or so she thinks. For me it was very clear: He didn’t feel as much love for her, as she did. And after a long time and a few back and forths, she realized this too and gave up on the hope that he might be the one (for now). It hurt my heart to see how unrequited love, broken hearts, and losing hope is a constant in our lives. How is it even possible that when one has given his or her all, expressing how he or she feels by being open and honest, the other person decides to play with the emotions instead of being open and honest with us back. It is not to say that he played with her in any way, just by the way she talked about it, by suppressing emotions and putting on a strong face, which I admire about her so much, she let go of her barricades and revealed to me her feelings, although I am sort of a stranger to her.

Maybe she trusted me and felt comfortable expressing her feelings and emotions with me. Maybe it was also because I brought up this topic, encouraged her to share with me if she feels comfortable with it. And maybe also because, I shared with her how I stand on this topic. I have shared with her that I have subconsciously made a life-long promise to myself that I will live and die for love. Now that I write it out, it sounds more dramatic than I anticipated, but I am a fighter for and lover of love. I have always wanted to experience it fully, sacrificed my energy, compromised my health, and even neglected myself to completely dive in into the feeling of love and how it moves me.

I was never one to hold back my feelings towards the people in my life and over time, I had to learn how to control and intensify them, in a more healthy and self-loving way. It doesn’t mean that I will love less in the future, or my love will be less real or passionate. Quite the contrary: The love I will give in the future will be even greater, still coming from a sincere and authentic place, with a great portion of uncompromised self-love and self-respect. Love maturation is real and so beautiful. And we all desperately need to pass the school of love in order to get to the other side of experiencing the love we truly deserve.

My friend is so beautiful inside and out, she will find someone, who will love her more than she ever thought possible.