The Flag We Really Need Right Now is Love
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The Flag We Really Need Right Now is Love
By Jane Tawel
June 14, 2022
*
It is the fault in us, Horatio, and not in our star-struck eyes.
It is society, and the culture of our own bent and broken time and place,
that has informed us, tried to misshapen us, and taught us falsely
that our sexuality is our identity.
Whether I have been straight or gay or I prefer to check “neither of the above”;
when I have let people think that my sex or my ex,
or my having or not having a certain defined relationship to my gender,
is what defines me,
then I have succumbed to the ills of the age.
I have fallen prey to the false religion of our times.
*
And the religion of this place and time is
that what I Do is Who I Am.
This world will try to tell me that what I do,
in the board room or the back room or the bedroom,
IS who I am.
But “IS” is not defined by some public agency.
“IS” is the agency of being.
“IS” is a being verb.
*
And yet, being is the scariest, most active thing a person can “do”;
and yet once one decides that being who she is,
is more important than any thing she does,
then he can be the very best self they want to be.
*
“Can’t we all just get along?”
Oh, I am old enough, if not yet wise enough,
to glimpse that when I fight you, I give you more strength;
but if I giggle and guffaw at how you try to define me,
and if I but hold my pride and need for you to approve,
as lightly in my hands as Mother Teresa held the lepers,
then I defeat your ability to tell me who I am.
