Hi m’dears
I’ve had this idea nagging in the back of my mind the past few weeks about how we bring our capacity for love to professional settings. It’s not something we talk about, or are even encouraged to believe in. We reserve the word “love” largely for romantic love. Or else for the very deep and special bonds of family and ultra-close friendship. Your child who you would quite literally lie down and die for. The friend who is your three-in-the-morning, the-test-came-back-positive phone call. And yes, of course, that sort of love—that rare, life-sustaining love—is obviously a very special thing
But I’ve come to realize I am not convinced that it is the only thing deserving of the name. To me, love feels a lot more abundant and all-permeating than that. There are smaller, more garden-variety loves woven all throughout our days—love in work, love in communities.
The care we show to those all around us—to help one another, to make one another’s lives better, to bring joy—to me it seems apparent that those are acts of love. Although, even as I’m typing this, I’m realizing I may be getting myself into a semantic quagmire. The counter-arguing voice in my head (we all have one of those, right?) points out that perhaps what I’m really talking about is not in fact love but kindness, compassion, patience, or generosity—any one of a number of a small graces that are the best parts of human nature and what we can do for one another. And yet, you know what? I find I persist in calling it love.
I had some distant memory, from my Catholic upbringing, that there was a specific term or terms for this love—agape, maybe, or caritas? So I did a quick search and found this handy explainer. Turns out these ideas come (as so much we still go on about does) from the ancient Greeks, who actually believed in six different kinds of love1. Eros, sexual love, is of course the one we remember best (and continue to be obsessed with) today. Agape—later translated by the Romans into Latin as caritas—meant love for everyone, selfless love. So, you can see why the Christians (the nice ones, not the wingnuts) were into that concept.
Cornell West once said “Justice is love on legs, spilling over into the public sphere.” I think about that quote all the time. “Love on legs.” I just adore that idea. That love doesn’t sit still. It gets up and goes out and does stuff, spills out into public, and that’s how social justice work starts happening.
I recently listened to Tim Kreider’s book I Wrote This Book Because I Love You—which is largely about his largely failed romantic relationships and largely successful friendships with women (many of them his ex-girlfriends). But one of the most moving essays was a short piece about his career teaching writing to college students, and his dual realizations that he was, on the one hand, in no danger whatsoever of being sexually attracted to his students, but that he did, on the other hand, love them, in an entirely nonromantic sense of the word.
There’s an Atlantic article being passed around at the moment about a study on remote work which illustrates that, during the pandemic, at the particular company where this study was conducted, it was female junior employees who were harmed the most by remote work, because they missed out on the most feedback and mentorship. Whereas it was female senior employees there who gained the most in time and productivity from going remote, because they were no longer spending so much time on feedback and mentorship.
Which in turn reminded me of an article by David Brookes (of whom, full disclosure, I am generally not a fan) in the New York Times a few months back, in which he argued that middle managers are effectively holding America together with their emotional labor (though he didn’t use that phrase, he said things like their attentiveness, their morality, their care, their joy, and yes, their love). There was something socially conservative about the piece that rubbed me the wrong way—probably especially as a former middle manager myself—something willfully oblivious to the fact that folks might be being asked to carry water for corrupt systems. Or, for that matter, that the fate of the nation shouldn’t have to rest on the shoulders of underpaid shlubs. Doesn’t our love deserve better?
But on the other hand, yes. Of course we can, by and large, a great many of us, be relied upon to treat one another well. Surprise, surprise. And yes, for many people, the chance to love and care for one another, to create warm welcoming spaces and moments of joy, is a huge part of what makes work worth going to. I found this when I had a job, and I continue to find this outside the corporate sphere.
I’ve written here many times before about how the freelance life has turned out to be much more populated, vastly more social, than I anticipated. I imagined myself working away in my little solitary editor burrow. But in reality, that could hardly be further from the truth. I talk to people all the time. I see and meet with people all the time. And I really love doing so. And I use that word advisedly.
If I can help someone or guide someone with their creative work—even someone I don’t know well—what is that but an act of love? (Well, a tremendous privilege, let’s just say that.) And I’m really not trying to romanticize here. The work I do, the work most of us do, is mostly practical and pragmatic and straightforward. It’s not magic and it’s not rocket science. Most of us are not saving lives and we’re certainly not bestowing fairy dust. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be loving. Love isn’t gooey, it isn’t silly, it isn’t frilly, it isn’t woo-woo. It isn’t the grand gesture at the end of the rom-com. It’s kindness, and joy, and warmth, and care, and respect.
Here’s another example. I happened to go around the other day with my daughter to some of her favorite places. The spot where she likes to get rice balls, her favorite place to get boba. These are small businesses she patronizes frequently, sometimes with others, often on her own. Everyone behind the counters knew her name. They chatted with her, said hi to me. What she does with these people is a commercial exchange. And also, she is woven into the community by their knowledge of her and hers of them. And that is love. I cannot think otherwise.
Music
Speaking of the Greeks, I went the other day for the first time in my whole entire life to the famous Greek Theater in Berkeley. This despite the fact that I grew up just north of Berkeley and used to go to many music concerts in my youth. But somehow I had never been to one at The Greek. An oversight that has now been corrected thanks to my dear pal Casey inviting me and our other pal Vanessa to go see Sarah McLachlan perform a 30th anniversary concert of her album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. If you are a Gen X woman—especially if you are white and/or liberal arts-y and/or crunchy granola but not too cool—odds are good you know this record and likely understand why we went. If you are not or do not: it was very pervasive amongst a certain demographic in 1994—when the three of us were freshmen in collage—and when you played the couple dozen CDs you owned on constant rotation until they were burned in your brain permanently, to the point where I could sing along with all the lyrics all these 30 years (and how can it be 30 years?!) later. You don’t usually see big masses of Gen X people around, they tend to keep us hidden in our separate hidey holes, so it was rather amusing to see just hundreds and hundreds of middle-aged ladies and think about every single one of them: “I could have gone to high school with her…” And it was fun to see a rock show—I probably hadn’t seen a big concert like that for, I don’t even know, a couple of decades. And as for the Greek itself, it was of course, absolutely luscious as a venue (thank you very much, Julia Morgan). I’ve been thinking lately about iconic Bay Area places I have yet to visit in my life and need to get around to. The David Ireland House and the Starlite Room, where I’ve been recently, were a couple. The Greek Theater was another. Angel Island has occurred to me. But I’m wanting to build a little list so if you’ve got suggestions lay ’em on me.
Mix Tape
As always, I am gifting you this with love. I hope you like it:
xo
b
The Greeks’ other forms of love were Philia – brotherly love or close friendship; Ludus – playful love, like between children or in flirtation; Pragma – longstanding love as in a mature partnership; and Philautia – love of the self.
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I "loved" the post today! You put words to my feelings about work in particular.
For things to see, if you haven't been to the Julia Morgan Theater you must go. I saw an unfortunately bad performance of The Sound of Music there but as I tuned out of the production, I tuned into the gorgeous interiors.
Ahh, Bridget - I loved reading this! This take on multi-faceted forms of love has crossed my path several times recently - and I appreciated adding your voice to the conversation. Thank you!