I was sitting on a bench waiting for an event to start and I started chatting with the man next to me. He told me that he lived with seven (7) other men, all Irish, all in their twenties, and predictably it had started to affect his faith in peaceful cohabitation. He said that one of the seven spilled orange juice on the floor and just left the spill untouched, for days. He said he didn’t want to clean it on principle but the spill was also affecting his quality of life and if he cleaned it then “they would never learn”. We then got to talking about whether his flatmates hate him or whether they’re in love with him. I also asked whether this was true of his colleagues as he had said he had just started a new job. I asked about this fake binary because it’s an easy and fun way to extract good gossip when you’re in a pinch, but I also asked because I think I do subscribe to the belief that either everyone loves me or hates me.
There’s a TikTok with a lady listing all the situations where she feels like everyone fancies her. When she wears sunglasses. When she’s at the airport. When she orders a latte… I understand her, deeply. I realize there are people like me, and this lady, my contemporary, and then there are people who believe most people either like them or are indifferent to them. They’re probably right, but it’s a boring POV.
Mohato and I are both reading bell hooks’ All About Love. In it, she states her definition of love, which she sourced from The Road Less Travelled. It’s defined as “The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.” She says many people react badly to this definition as they see all the times they have been unloved. Like I was talking about last week, we don’t all have a shared definition of love. While waiting for the bus on Wednesday an old lady with a honeyed Jamaican accent asked me how I was doing. I’ve been trying to be more honest, so I told her I’ve been terrible, actually. She said I should pray, which even though I am not religious I welcome as a well-intentioned desire for me to find refuge. I thanked her and she said “I love you, baby” and I almost cried.
My favourite Barbara Kruger work features the text: "Having two or three people in love with you is like money in the bank.” I used to love saying at parties that when we die, we should get sent a list of everyone who had ever been in love with us, for how long, why the love started, and if it did, why it stopped. And before you moan, your list will be long and detailed and emphatic in its adoration. After all, everyone is in love with you, right?
Thanks for reading! <3
I look forward to your musings in my inbox every week. A reminder to seek love and to share love. I also agree we should get a list of all the people who ever loved us but how about it randomly pops up with a name & story whenever we feel like no one loved us.
🥰🥰🥰 that makes me so happy, thank you! And that’s such a sweet idea — I love it! We need to speak to management. 😅