Where do you stand?
“Where do you stand?”
In a world of absolute-cemented positionalities, it leaves no room for oscillation — of looking forward, learning, healing, and of reaching backward, of understanding.
In a world of stances, of determined and unmovable positions, lines are often drawn. Lines are not to be crossed, a symbol of moral declarations, where sides are taken, marked by where you stand.
Yet, as thinker Dr. Bayo Akomolafe posits, can we as humans, occupy such moral positions? Are we not what we say…or where we stand?
Nevertheless, stances are always troubled-bothered by the “quantum inclinations that ripple through our claims to stable and resolute positionality.”
Even when we try to stand still, we are moved, noticing the subtle sways of our bodies.
Yet, in a world of stands, on either side of the morally drawn lines, we stand on the same plane, “operating from the same logic.” Cut from the same cloth as you will.
Instead of such cemented positions of stands, can we find ways to sway — or sit — to come together — to find queer openings — an attempt at healing and understanding.
We are entangled in, meshed with, the lines we draw, the stands we take, and the moral declarations we speak.
In the words of Dr. Bayo Akamolofe, “How do we process the grief, how do we pray, do we act, do we think.”
I want to leave with this musing:
How do we find ways to sit or lay down? How do we hold openings to listen, to be, to linger, to learn, to hold what is escaping us? How do we move beyond the lines, the positions that divide us?
