What an over used word, right? It’s almost as if it lost it’s meaning – because it has. This generation knows how to love, we really do. We understand actions that mean love – we understand that we kiss our partners, we run our fingers through their hair to comfort them, we understand that we should listen to them, we understand that we should be there for them (whatever that entails). However, very few of us (especially novel lovers) understand the processes and WHY certain actions mean love.

We, as women, are taught at an early age that love is like the movies. We must say no walk away and the man is supposed to chase after us, twirl us around, hold on to us, and kiss us until we give in (because THAT’S what we really want when we say no). Movies have taught us that if he’s angry and yelling, he is more than likely just trying to get to know us (so we, and our partners, can’t differentiate between actual ‘get away from me’ anger and ‘I’m trying to get to understand you’ anger).

Love is communication. It’s as simple as that. It’s being able to openly receive messages and analyze those messages, and respond in a way that is healthy for you and the other being. Conceptually, love is an easy concept. In reality, it is an extremely difficult task to do. We are bombarded with messages that tell us that there is THE ONE out there for us, when in reality we have the potential to fall head over heels with absolutely every individual we come in contact with. Empathy, active listening, and suspension of judgment are the basal foundations of love and all of it’s elemental magic. We don’t have one soulmate, and we don’t have to block anyone and everyone until we find “the one” because we lose the ability to understand that everyone has the potential to bond with us.

Last week I attended a dinner conversation with Dr. Eddy Alvarez where we discussed the complicated subject of love. I really liked that the focus wasn’t entirely on romantic love like these discussions usually lead in. The discussion didn’t even just concern love for family members or friends, but we also talked about love for objects or love for places. The most interesting love that I thought we talked about was love for places such as home. Dr. Alvarez read some poems to us, including some of his own work, and one poem described an individual’s love for his home in Los Angeles. The poem talked about their favorite aspects of Los Angeles and how even though it was something that they loved and somewhere that they felt safe, it was also a place that they had to leave in order to grow.

One interesting side topic that I enjoyed discussing was when Dr. Alvarez spoke of the hypocrisy that some people can exhibit. For example he was explaining how social movement are incredibly important and can be inspired by the love for others. However some people can work towards social change and peace, while being mean to those around them and being hateful to some of their coworkers. I found this discussion incredibly interesting and very true. People can get caught up in the righteousness of their work, but not evaluate themselves or the love that they should be emanating towards their peers as well.

Love. We’re all familiar with the concept, and some of us might actually know what it feels like. But there’s more to this vague, abstract notion, as we discussed at last week’s dinner conversation. I think it’s also very important to share with you that I am absolutely the world’s number one enemy of all things sappy. To my delight, this event did not include much about romantic connections. Instead we talked about love in general: love for places (home), objects (that sentimental old stuffed teddy bear from our childhoods), and people (both family members and life partners). Love, just as is almost every other concept we can define, can be viewed as a social construction. What we seem to think of love is shaped by the world around us–what we observe from others’ lives and what we want for our own lives.

After having been at college for a couple years now, I’ve developed pretty strong feelings about love. I never really saw a value in the concept as a result of the experiences of those around me. I based my entire definition of love on what everyone else thought of it. However, Professor Alvarez pointed out that love is what we make of it (it is a social construction after all). While I do consider myself to be optimistic, I didn’t realize how closed my perspective was. It’s important not to fall into the trap of confining your beliefs due to socially constructed philosophies. Things never should be anything; things simply are. How we perceive them is on us. So I guess this brings me to the point: what is anything, really?

We usually think of have concrete or conditional forms of love when asked what is the meaning of love. It is hard to get past the notion that love can be more than romantic, and can be seen in plenty of other forms. For example, there is platonic love, familial love, simmered down love(after the initial in love phase has calmed down), etc. Our speaker argued that love “should” be an unconditional type of emotion that we have for other people. It should mean supporting others, being happy, helping others, and overall just wanting the betterment of another individual. However, he made an argument that even groups working on promoting love and acceptance of themselves to the rest of the world, such as LGBTQ, civil rights, and environmental activists are also devoid of love sometimes as well. They argue and criticize each other, instead of seeking the upliftment of the individual that would eventually filter down to the entirety of the organization. Many feminists of color believe that placing love in our goals is the predictor of them becoming fruitful. Things fueled by hate they argue will only end in dysfunction.

The speaker read us a few poetry pieces that touched him and us alike. Although I could not relate to the places and the types of love referred to in the pieces, there was emotion and passion behind his words that I’m sure most people good relate to. Overall it was a nice event that allowed me to see a different way at looking at life.

Last semester I attended the seminar “How do we love?” and thought that it would be interesting to see if and how my views had changed when discussing love. I don’t think they have changed that much but it was interesting, as usual, to hear what others had to say about love.

We talked about what love is to all of us and jotted words and phrases down on the board. Some words that resonated with me were selflessness and selfishness, as well as family. Selflessness in love makes sense to me because you do everything you can for the person you love, or for the people you love. I never really question why I do some things for certain people, I just do them because I love them. Additionally love can be very selfish. If we love someone, especially romantically, we want them to ourselves. Family is love, the only kind I’ve ever known and the most rudimentary unit of love, other than loving ourselves. Family is what teaches love in my opinion and gives us our first taste of love. Perhaps family is what teaches us to love ourselves in the first place…

The poems Dr. Alvarez read to us were thought provoking and very deep and descriptive. In his own written work, he talks about the way love is captured through the five senses and I really enjoyed this imagery. Love is not just felt, but rather seen, heard, tasted and even smelled. He talked about loving a hometown and loving a person and even loving yourself in order to love more. I find his research very fascinating and would love to learn more about how he intends to map out love for queers.

Overall, I enjoyed this talk. I still think love is a form of weakness and after hearing the poems, my thought is reinforced. Love makes us vulnerable, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t love.

Dr. Alvarez needed more time to speak. I know this to be true because there were many deep themes introduced, through the social justice lens, that needed the audience needed more time to delve into.

However, his presence was the best kind of overwhelming, as I could not place him in any one box. I accepted the ideas, poems and thoughts he threw into the atmosphere with an open mind, and found myself in a place that I hadn’t been in a while – my soul.

In my daily life, I am in my mind, allowing it to affirm or question what it knows, while contemplating taking in more. Ever so often, I will attend a church service, livestream a service, watch a SuperSoul Sunday, or have a deep conversation with a friend about spirituality, and find myself discovering and reclaiming parts of my inner spirit. But to be in my soul, I don’t allow to take up my time.

My soul is the place where Love‘s unanswered questions and feelings reside, at least part of it. I like to divide love into two parts – the part that affirms my belief that God is Love and the part that is affected by human interactions. The latter resides in my soul and I don’t tamper with it much. Reason being was excellently said by Dr. Alvarez in the poem that he recited – a place that I don’t want to go.

One might question why I wouldn’t want to question the love in my soul. That love is fragile. It is a love that sets aside, and belittles, all of my accomplishments and accolades, and places a mirror in front of the parts no one can see. The part that has internalized all of the good and bad that I have seen. The bad relationships that I grew up around. The bad people that I came in contact with. The bad experiences that have scarred my ideas of love. But also, the good and idolized relationships that I grew up around. The good people who, to this day I cannot figure out why, love me, yet have no familial ties to me. The good images of love from Black and white romantic comedies that do not often match up with the realities around me. All of these things that I don’t tamper with because I fear they will make me cry, or desire more, or question what is, rest within my soul.

Dr. Alvarez did many things for me during his visit, but the most important was reminding me that there are some things I need to deal with. This is important because recently I had a conversation with one of my closest friends, during a confusing time for me. She explained how when she was in a similar place of doubt and hurt she learned that it was time to deal with all of the things that she hadn’t. Once she did, her life and love have improved tremendously.

I think that it’s time for me to do the same, so that Love & Life may be the good things they are designed to be for me.

In his talk last Thursday, Dr. Alvarez brought up some interesting techniques on representing and depicting love in literature, especially in spoken word poetry. One technique that I found most interesting was tying love to place through the use of language: that is, using a local patois, dialect or language to spur memories of place.

In his poems about his childhood neighborhood in Los Angeles, Dr. Alvarez was quick to interject phrases in Spanish, culturally transporting the listeners to Huntington Park. We talked about why this is effective. One woman present at the talk noted how this use of Spanish, however brief, brought back childhood memories of buying cake in the same neighborhood. Hearing him speak these words– as opposed to silently reading them– made the work sensory, all the more real. Coupled with his vivid descriptions and imagery, I could not only visualize the neighborhood, but I could hear it. The use of language placed the poem, rendering it much more evocative.

As a sidenote, there is also an interesting political dimension of using dialect in literature. I am unsure if Dr. Alvarez intended a political meaning with his use of Spanish– it seemed to be more stylistic and reminiscent– but a political dimension is certainly possible. Thinking back to P.P. Pasolini’s use of Roman dialect in his secondo dopoguerra (period after WWII; literally the second “afterwar”) novels, I brought up both the authenticity evoked by and political value of his use of dialect. The careful use of language or dialect, in short, helps us to map and liven our memories: this is clear in Dr. Alvarez’s poetry.

“What is love?” This was the question Dr. Eddy Alvarez asked us at our dinner conversation. After a couple of minutes, we compiled a list of words and phrases that could serve as the definition of such an abstract yet powerful word. Among several other definitions, love is selflessness, warmth, attachment, and God. This dinner conversation, however, gave me a unique perspective on what love was. Dr. Alvarez was passionate about defining love through the eyes and experiences of the Latino and LGBTQ communities. Poetry was one of his mediums.

Dr. Alvarez read us three poems, one of which was his. They were all powerful pieces that displayed the struggles of being gay and a person of color. How does one live in a world with so much pain and suffering? The answer, which was beautifully relayed in the poems, is through love. Society has given us the notion that talking about love can sometimes make one appear weak and fragile. According to Dr. Alvarez, we actually need to talk more about love because it serves as the foundation/base for so much of what we believe and do. As a fellow Hispanic, I felt like I could relate to Dr. Alvarez. I am proud to be Latino! Soy orgulloso de ser Latino!

Love in today’s society is a many faced creature, it is darn near impossible to define it. However, Dr.Alvarez mentioned a few points that had never crossed my mind before. First, love is a social construct and is experienced in many different ways. Secondly, the image of love that is displayed in the media is very pervasive and kind of toxic. It makes people feel that if their love is not resembling the common view then it is not truly love. This is a problem that is slowly but surely being solved, yet I still feel it will never truly change. Lastly, love can lead to feelings of immense pain. Please excuse my language, but love can make you feel like sh#t that’s just been run over by a sixteen wheeler truck driven on a lonely empty road. The phrase love sucks doesn’t even come close to describing how badly love can mess up a person’s life.

On the plus side, this pain can lead to some truly beautiful poetry. Dr. Alvarez shared three pieces of poetry that were filled with pain but also filled with beauty. His own poem, really made me think about how to channel these painful feelings caused by love into something good. Usually, I just get really sad or angry which leads me to wanting to knock someone’s head off. I think I’ll find a new way to get over the pain, I’m no poet but I’m sure I can come up with something. All in all, this was a great event that adds to all I’ve learned from the events last semester that focused on love.

So this past week, I went to a talk about the role of love in today’s society, a topic that is simultaneously one of the most and least talked about in modern times. There’s this pervasive idea of what love is supposed to be like, that everyone hopes and dreams of, but at the same time, those that talk about it are perceived as weak. This is because love, as so eloquently pointed out by Dr. Alvarez, is a social construct. We need to remember that no two people experience love the same way, and none is better than another. Still, what we perceive to be love is an integral part of our society. In fact, love, and the ability to have open conversations about love, is the key to overcoming today’s injustice and bigotry. So many people fight for the rights of one particular group while perpetuating the discrimination of another, when the only way we can really solve any of these problems is to learn to love everyone unconditionally. Easier said than done, of course, but entirely necessary to achieve our goals.

On a slightly different note, Dr. Alvarez also reminded us that love is actually quite painful. It’s not always rainbows and butterflies, and that’s okay. Love hurts. In fact, I can say from my own personal experiences that this pain can sometimes be the only way I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I legitimately care for someone. It’s tragic and magical, all at the same time….

I once had a friend tell me that heartbreak is beautiful, because it showed just how much an individual cared about their significant other. After going to this talk, I’m believing that more and more…

Our dinner discussion with Dr. Alvarez raised a lot of interesting and profound questions about love. Dr. Alvarez started the conversation by asking what love means to each of us and whether it is personal, social, and/or political. He also encouraged us to think about situations when love is pleasant and times when it is difficult or even painful.

I was not taught a formal definition of love growing up so it was interesting and surprising to hear that so many other students were. Some were told to equate love with God or had adults in their lives define love as a particular phrase regarding how to treat other people.

As a group, we touched on the idea that love is learned in the family setting and begins with feelings for family members or even hometowns. However, as we grow up, our experiences change and shape our notion of love.

One student brought up a question that really interested me and the others in attendance. She asked, “If you fall for someone from a very different background as yourself (socioeconomically, ethnically, etc.), what does that mean for your relationship?” It was interesting to hear other people’s perspective on this modern topic because although we agreed it is difficult to get to a deep level of mutual understanding, this situation is becoming more and more common for couples.

Dr. Alvarez facilitated a thought-provoking discussion and I really appreciated how he combined his sharing of poems and speaking about his own research with an open dialogue and participation by the attendees. This event truly accomplished its purpose of being a seminar for discussion on a topic that we don’t often get to think or talk about.

Love is not typically something we think about as political. Some of us think of our families when it comes to love, some think of flowers and chocolate on valentines day, and some think of just spending time with someone who they have a connection with. But love is a much more complicated idea than most of us imagine. It is many-faceted. While we often think of love as a feeling of safety, love can mean going places that you are afraid to visit. It can mean a memory pushed back in time. Love is different for everyone, and it was very interesting to hear the different versions of love from a diverse group during this dinner conversation. The pieces that were performed gave me chills – I had never thought about love in such a context. It was shocking to consider love within the frames of sexism, racism, and classism. To be asked, point blank, if love could truly flourish between a privileged white man and a less privileged woman of color was like being slapped in the face. Most of us are taught that love has no boundaries, and that we should love all – but while most of us nod our heads and say “of course,” we often have preconceptions about each other. And even if those preconceptions are overcome, a whole new obstacle arises in that we are all taught to love in different ways. While in one family to love may be to take care of the rest of the family, in another love may be taught as selfishness. Or at least the appearance of selfishness. This complicated topic really made me think and I am glad I attended.