Originally published in Defunct Magazine (2021)

A wise man once said “treat people with kindness”. That wise man was Harry Styles, and that is not exactly an original quote of his, but he did name a song, and launch a line of clothing surrounding this sentiment, so the fanatic directioner in me will give him credit. I would, however, like to amend his statement: “treat people with kindness and respect”. Respect seems to be a hot button word, being essentially the golden rule from the time we start schooling at just five years old. Respect looks different, though, in different contexts.

Recently, for whatever reasons that I truly cannot discern, I’ve been seeing more and more anti-semitic tropes, themes, discourse—just simply more antisemitism than what I’m used to, which isn’t much, and I’ve liked it that way. It’s a shame that that personal norm has come to such a seemingly abrupt pause. It has almost never been overt; I’m lucky in that I have not experienced blatant, directed antisemitism, but there are unfortunately many people who can’t say the same.

I just typed out this entire blog post, was ready to post it, and somehow lost the entire thing. I guess that’s pretty ironic considering the content of this post. So as I try to push through my extreme frustration and rewrite it all, I want to take this moment to stress that this year has tested our patience and strength in ways I don’t think any of us would have expected. When I left school on March 16th, I packed enough clothes to last me two weeks, which was how long I planned on staying home before returning to campus. Obviously I was mistaken.

It’s been a long semester, and, needless to say, a long year. Not that I would have chosen the state of our world right now by any means, at all, whatsoever—there was some good to come out of this year. What comes to mind instantly, is the amount of reading I’ve been able to do over the course of this pandemic.