They Just Look Like Love, Episode 90
What if love isn't a feeling, but an action or a path we can walk?
A conversation about actively choosing who and how we love, giving up trying to control things, and the miraculous properties of cups of tea with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 90 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is a from Rebecca Solnit's new book 'Cinderella Liberator'. It launches us into conversation about the difference between feeling love and loving. We explore how practicing love without demanding that we feel a particular way, or get something particular in return, opens up a whole world.
Along the way we explore what it might be like to actively choose how and who we love, the life-giving possibilities of making a cup of tea, loving people from afar on the London Underground, and the terrible consequences of imagining that love can be found by trying to climb to the top of the ladder of beauty.
They Just Look Like Love
Pearlita was doing her best to pile her hair as high as hair could go. She said that, surely, having the tallest hair in the world would make you the most beautiful woman, and being the most beautiful would make you the happiest.
Paloma was sewing extra bows onto her dress, because she thought that, surely, having the fanciest dress in the world would make you the most beautiful woman in the world, and being the most beautiful would make you the happiest. They weren’t very happy, because they were worried that someone might have higher hair or more bows than they did. Which, probably, someone did. Usually someone does.
But there isn’t actually a most beautiful person in the world, because there are so many kinds of beauty. Some people love roundness and softness, and other people love sharp edges and strong muscles. Some people like thick hair like a lion’s mane, and other people like thin hair that pours down like an inky waterfall, and some people love someone so much they forget what they look like. Some people think the night sky full of stars at midnight is the most beautiful thing imaginable, some people think it’s a forest in snow, and some people… Well, there are a lot of people with a lot of ideas about beauty. And love. When you love someone a lot, they just look like love.
– Rebecca Solnit, from Cinderella Liberator
Photo by Takalani Radali on Unsplash