Love is All Around
Like the theme song lyrics asserted in the eponymous sitcom starring Mary Tyler Moore, love is all around so there is certainly no need to waste it. Except that, in reality, it is the concept of love that is really all around. The author makes it clear that we live every day in a society that is obsessed with the idea of love within a world in which love is the dominant positive emotion. And yet, despite being surrounded by all this alleged love, in many if not most cases it exists more as a word to be expressed than an emotion to be felt. The author relentlessly pursues what is both the underlying and overarching theme of the book: how can love genuinely be all around us and yet so rarely found and so easily wasted?
Empathy and Judgment
The two greatest threats to love are a failure of empathy and an abundance of judgment. Empathy, hooks points out, is the key toward connecting with another person while judgment is the weapon of alienation. Without an authentic ability to feel compassion toward another person—genuine compassion and not merely tainted altruistic interest—empathy is obstructed and where there is a failure to empathize there is a subsequent inability to love. Likewise, love can exist within the vacuum created by being overly judgmental for only so long. Judgment is not synonymous with being critical; empathy can spur constructive criticism. Judgment, therefore, can in a sense be defined as criticism without empathy because it is a critique spurred by self-interest rather than compassion interest.
The Dark Side of Love
Loving another is not in and of itself the path to happiness. Likewise, the purest love in the world is not enough to make the recipient of that love happy if they do not desire it.. This is really a key thematic component of the entire book because it speaks toward the universal desire of everyone. In millions of different ways, everybody everywhere is very often engaged either in the pursuit of giving or receiving love. And because this is process is so complicated and is formulated in such a vast array of ways and much of the time—maybe as much as half or more—the ways and means by which love is carried out turns very dark and destructive. Toni Morrison is quoted quite specifically on this issue as suggesting there have been fewer forces in history more destructive than romantic desire. The real issue at the heart of this this, of course, goes back to the very genesis of the idea: what is love and where is the line to be found which separate love from its all dark spawn: jealousy and possessiveness.
