Bell hooks cuts against our romantic inheritance here—the notion that love announces itself like lightning, that it's something that *happens* to us rather than something we *practice*. Her reframing is almost stubbornly practical: love becomes a verb, a discipline, the unglamorous work of showing up when you're tired or annoyed. Consider a parent at 3 a.m. with a sick child, or someone listening to their partner's worry for the hundredth time without checking their phone—that's where love actually lives, not in the flush of infatuation. This matters because it absolves us of waiting for permission to love, and it holds us accountable for the same.