The conundrum when it comes to love is that we all have different definitions for the word. Some use the term loosely, some use the term exclusively, but we all know what it is. Or at least, we all know how it feels. Prolific scholar bell hooks, who chooses to spell her name uncapitalized in order to draw more focus to her message, challenges us to not treat love as a feeling, but as an action. She argues that because we treat love as instinctual, the inducer of our actions, we allow ourselves to believe we simply “fall” in love, and we cannot control it when we do. This belief, that we lack control, makes excuses for “crimes of passion” such as abuse. She states, “We cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive,” and to use love as an excuse for hurting someone is to devalue and degrade its meaning.Perhaps we are afraid to choose love as an action, as a choice. Perhaps our belief that certain loves are innate has made us passive.