Abby C

You can sort of see the vestiges of this in our language. The words desire and consider both come from the Latin word sidus , meaning “star,” because our very emotions were thought to come from the stars.

The word influence is another fascinating example, from the Latin words for “flow in.” When the verb was first borrowed into English in the 14th... See more

Courage, in this world, is not just rebellion; it’s the act of remembering who you are before the algorithms and cultural mandates rearranged you.

I used to believe that you should love someone for who they are. I still believe that, but with the caveat that I think that you should also love how they handle things . Is the distinction meaningful?

But isn’t this exactly what Orwell warned us about — the erosion of critical thought beneath the weight of collective compliance? Isn’t this what Bradbury feared, that in the pursuit of comfort, we would stop asking questions altogether? The most radical thing we can do is to question what we are told, even when the answers unsettle us. Especially... See more

Monocultures

We were hunters and gatherers. Being a teenager means you’re desperately trying to be understood and to find yourself.

Creating diverse ecosystems is hard for humans because they like to do whatever everyone else is doing, even when they know it’s wrong. So when you’re trying to be a mammal and you see someone else trying to be a lizard, you might think they’re just doing a bad job being a mammal

Love necessarily involves exposure and damage. But another word for damage might be change, or expansion. Falling in love with someone’s style is not the same thing as believing it’s the one most compatible to yours. It’s more frustrating than that, and more magical.

It’s not a skill to make someone feel desirable. It’s not impressive to crave a body when you don’t even know it’s grief. I am not hard to want. But I am hard to hold. Hard to know. Hard to get close to.