And Love, Is It Blind?

Before I start, I want to mention that every time I speak of love in this text, I'm not speaking from a romantic, Christian, Western, heteronormative view of relationships. I'm referring to the feeling of loving. Love itself.

The show Love Is Blind always sparks my interest. Setting aside the many critiques about reinforcing beauty standards and heteronormative relationship models (bleh) — the experiment, however shallow, tries to put a question to the test: after all, is love blind?

It's remarkable how this belief keeps crumbling in postmodern times, so much so that we have a reality show capitalizing on this very question, and a massive audience that, I believe, mostly finds the question pointless: what do you mean, love without seeing?

What a shame… we're the blind ones, unable to see love.

I like two lines from Bell Hooks in All About Love that help me understand this subject.

"Our confusion about what we mean when we use the word 'love' is the root of our difficulty loving."

According to her, we struggle to love. And she herself answers why this task is so hard.

"The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others."

So, for Bell Hooks, the deprivation of love is a tool of the oppressor's domination — and maybe that's why, I'd guess, we hear less and less about this feeling.

But… come with me, love, open up that little heart and receive a bit of what I feel for you.

Love has nothing to do with the physical world. The act of loving is believing that the given person, living being, or thing can do you so much good that you want to care for it, preserve it. A pleasure so great you want to share it, to the point you don't understand when others don't believe in such wonder. You go mad — madness of love!

And I call it an act because small acts of affection are what move love. And, as with anything we want to set in motion in life, we need to believe in it. Ultimately, we love our beliefs — that's why we find people who love their religions, their money, their sports, and so on. It's not because what we're living today is good, it's because tomorrow will be at least as good.

I understand you…

Sometimes we complicate loving another human being. We carry in our minds very fixed rules about how people should move through life. Hard… people move in countless ways, and eventually they'll move against our rules, even the ones we consider trivial.

But that's exactly where the act of loving comes in — welcoming what makes the other move the way they move, and also welcoming the consequences and new movements that will follow.

Of COURSE love is blind!

To love is to choose, and to allow yourself to be moved along with someone. Transform yourself! Make life happen! Exercise, ultimately, what remains of humanity between us in this hypocritical postmodernity.

We keep sickly trying to fit into the countless social rules that contemporary society demands, so that when we face our own feeling, our own mirror, we freeze. Just like Paulo Simi, afraid of society's reaction to his desire.

Welcome yourself, welcome your feeling. Society is too sick for you to keep worrying about it. Let go of the rules that only hold you back, and live this madness that people can't understand.

And if, in the end, life's experiences hurt you too much… I'll be here, my love. Finding it beautiful to watch you live, waiting for the moment we're reborn again.

I love you, Lair Júnior.