I recently read an article in the “Washington Post” that covered the war in Ukraine. It detailed the devastating reality of war and the depth of the collective grief and suffering in Pryluky, Ukraine, following the killing of the civilian Ivanchenko family. Oleksandr Ivanchenko, his wife Yuliia, and their two young children, Iryna and Maksym, […]
My father is a mama’s boy; anyone who knows him can see it. Most nights, if you walk past his office, you’ll hear him and my grandmother in deep conversation. Each day he calls, and, without fail, she picks up, and they talk and talk. Even when her hearing started to go, they’d talk, though […]
I once saw an old man in the pub. He had sad eyes: that’s what I remember most about him. Sad, slightly glazed eyes that stared into the frothy foam of an undrunk Guinness, waiting to be met with kindness. I pulled up a chair to talk to him, but he didn’t seem interested: “Waiting […]
Earlier this year, I found myself roasting in the Tercentenary Theatre—otherwise known as the Yard—for my older brother’s graduation. The speeches went on and on and on and … you get the gist. There were just so many speeches—a lot of boring ones, some funny ones (thank you, Conan O’Brien ’85 and Ronny Chieng). What […]
A priest and a worshiper, not of the Christian faith but of the priest himself, sit beside each other in silence at a nondescript bus shelter in the middle of the night. The worshiper has an interesting name: Fleabag—an odd thing to call a child. (I doubt it is her real name.) The silence is […]
I previously published an article in the “Harvard Independent” on the subject of faith and our need for it, of any kind, in these trying times we live in. However, I neglected to say fully that faith is not enough. It is my firm belief that as much as one believes, not only when it […]
I often think about last words and what I would say when my time comes. Would mine be poignant, like William James’s: “These, then, are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact”—or ironic, like John Adams’s in 1826: […]
Last semester, I authored an opinion editorial titled “A Commentary on Conservatism,” in which I, borrowing the words of Sir Roger Scruton, described the ideology as a “philosophy of love.” This is a sentiment I still hold to be true. The title of a “philosophy of love” doesn’t solely belong to conservatism but is […]
What does it mean to show one’s existence? What mark can one make as proof of their time on Earth? These are broad questions with no definitive answers. Nonetheless, we ponder these questions as we age, as every moment in life seems more important than the last. It is this tension between impermanence and the […]
I, like many other teenagers, spend far too much time on TikTok, consuming copious amounts of AI slop and content so mind-numbingly stupid it almost makes my lectures seem interesting … almost. However, amongst all the OOTDs (Outfits-of-the-Day) and food reviews, some gems make you stay beyond the 0.2 seconds it takes to scroll. I […]
