Learning to Sit Still

            Nonetheless we strive for change, unsure if we will actually make any.  Thankfully, there is a foolproof guarantee to creating change, called the erotic.  Embracing the erotic and understanding what it can mean allows us to regain some of our primal intellect, making room for growth and opportunity in the realm of love.  “Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama” (Lorde 59).  In this way we can find the true meaning or meanings of love.

            From the moment we entered a classroom we were taught to sit still and endure long, preachy, and (sometimes) irrelevant lectures.  This mentality has found its way into our relationships, morphing the meaningful into the miserable and the miserable into marriage and marriage into divorce; love has become a cyclic institution.  But we can resist, we need to remember how to wriggle in our chairs and tap at our desks, ignoring the demands of “would you please stop doing that.”  Maybe sitting in detention is the only way to find the people who will be a part of our movement.  Maybe one of them will help us to finish the following sentence:

Love is ________________________________.

Works Cited

Kipnis, Laura. Against Love: A Polemic. New York: Pantheon, 2003. Print.

Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic As Power.” Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches. New York: Random House, 2007. Print.

Schwalbe, Michael. Rigging The Game: How Inequality Is Reproduced in Everyday Life. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.