FIRE IN THE LAKE by Ko Imani
[email protected]

"What's l**e got to do with it?"
"It ain't easy, growin' up in WW3
Never knowin' what love could be
But I've seen, I don't want love to destroy me
Like it has done my family�"
~ "Family Portrait" by
Pink

Valentine's Day may be over, but it's time that we keep love in our thoughts year-round.  With threats of terrorism and possibly a literal "WW3" looming, Pink's video for her song, "Family Portrait," is surprisingly timely.  It exposes the personal pain caused by ignorance about love, the kind of personal pain that leads many people to act out in more and more destructive ways.  There's no more time for us to play games and aspire to the name and recognition of love, this is the moment for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-attractional and Transgender (LGBT) people to become ambassadors of Love.

The word "love" has been thrown around a lot in the last fifty years, from 60's Flower Power to Oprah, and rarely does it mean the same thing to different people at the same time.  In fact, most of us were raised to confuse Love with care, physical intimacy and, in all-too-frequent dysfunction, with abuse or neglect. 

Many LGBT people have particular trouble giving and receiving love because of mistreatment by our families of origin.  Those who taught us much of what we know of love, and those who were supposed to love us longest and best, too often rejected us because of our sexual orientation or gender identity.  Sometimes, as is the case in Pink's video, where the singer's hurting inner child takes center stage, our parents didn't mistreat us, they themselves just didn't understand how to love.  So, of course they couldn't model it for us! 

Without an understanding of capital-'L' Love, we do not know what it really means to love, nor how to love one another, whether in
philia (friendly love), eros (intimate love), or agape (love not based on personal relationship).  "Never knowin' what love could be" on a personal level, we are also unable to induce loving behavior and policies on a societal or global scale.  Is it any wonder our world is in turmoil?

In order to understand how Love will help LGBT people lead the world toward peace, health and prosperity, we need a shared definition of Love.  Taking a cue from bell hooks' book
All About Love: New Visions and M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled, Love is "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's [holistic] growth." 

In practice, this means exercising Care, Affection, Recognition, Respect, Commitment, Trust and Concern, as well as Open and Honest Communication, with those for whom one feels the will to love, with the simple goal of one's own and others' physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being. 

Under this definition, we are only loving when we are either taking action (or are prepared to take action) by extending ourselves to nurture self or others.  We are not loving when we are just liking, enjoying, or appreciating, and certainly not when hating, attacking, abusing, neglecting or throwing shade.

Applying this definition of Love to our intimate relationships-familial, fraternal, romantic and sexual-we may be confronted with a startling lack of genuine Love in our lives.  Those who care for us, and those for whom we care, do not always treat us with Love-with the intention to nurture our holistic growth-and the same may be true in reverse, and of self-love.

What is most important is that queers begin to Love, genuinely and deeply.  However, an intention to Love requires us to see our relationships clearly.  We tend to confuse Love with care, attraction, awe, pleasure and cathexis (the process by which another becomes important to us by our investing emotionally in them). 

While relationships based on care, attraction, awe, pleasure and cathexis may be intensely enjoyable, and may meet some of our holistic care needs, they are not inherently Love relationships.  After initial attraction and cathexis, we make the decision to extend ourselves to nurture the other or not.  Even in family relationships, we are conditioned to believe that Love is simply there, usually confusing care and affection with Love, or despite whatever unloving patterns of behavior may be acted out in those relationships. 

Pink laments the end of her parents' relationship in "Family Portrait," and sings, "I don't want love to destroy me/Like it has done my family."  But, when we consider real Love, it is always constructive.  Love never destroys.  Care, Affection, Recognition, Respect, Commitment, Trust, Concern, and Open and Honest Communication: the elements of Love are not a cancer.  They're a blessing.  Those who embody this kind of Love can't discriminate, abuse or bomb.  This Love is a transformative way of life, not a momentary experience; a way of genuinely healing and cultivating instead of another game of "Let's play pretend."

Each LGBT person has the courage and potential to become a stone dropped into a stagnant pool; an emissary of Love whose very presence and example send ripples of change through their surroundings.  This is the moment to change.  Don't let it pass you by.

Preview Ko Imani's book, Shirt of Flame: The Secret Gay Art of War, at www.geocities.com/newlgbtactivism.  Ko and his husband live in Ypsilanti, MI, with their puppy.


[Return to LGBT Columns]
[
Return Home]

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1