S MONDAY

People are tagged with other labels that point to the lowest-status group they belong to, as in "woman doctor" or "wannabe writer," but never "crooked lawyer" or  "useless politician". Any category that lowers our status relative to others' can be used to mark us; to be privileged is to go through life with the relative ease of being unmarked. Oh, I wouldn't mind, AZ. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.

I came to the conclusion a while ago that there is nothing romantic or supernatural about loving someone: Love is the privilege of being responsible for another. It was, for a time, what kept me going: Each morning, for a little while, I got to feel the weight of the yoke on my back as I pulled the ancient cart of my species. A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility.  If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not.

Privilege is not in and of itself bad; what matters is what we do with privilege. What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude. It's easy to fictionalize an issue when you're not aware of the many ways in which you are privileged by it. “If love is the greatest gift of all-and I believe it is- then the greatest privilege of all is to be able to love someone. Privilege is driving a smooth road and not even knowing it.