Within me there lay an invincible summer - by Ashley Zhang

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It’s been a season of grief, personally and collectively. Some days, I have felt flattened, incapacitated by it; other days, I am able to gather myself and take a few wobbly steps through the haze. I’ve been trying to come to terms with life’s tragedies: the casual cruelty in the way we often engage with each other, the persistence of atrocities around the world, the violations of human dignity in the margins of society, the ordinary devastation of losing people we love. All I can say is: I wish we could learn to be better, kinder, gentler — to each other, to ourselves, to the world. To live in this world, it often feels like we are forced to lobotomize ourselves. There is no space in our lives to collapse under the weight of grief, so we must shut ourselves down from within. We become numb and detached, entering a state of self-protective apathy until the next tragedy shatters this fragile armor — again, and again, and again. Remaining tender and open despite the world’s harshness is

Vincent van Gogh, Almond Blossom, 1890. Dear friend, It’s been a season of grief, personally and collectively. Some days, I have felt flattened, incapacitated by it; other days, I am able to gather myself and take a few wobbly steps through the haze. I’ve been trying to come to terms with life’s tragedies: the casual cruelty in the way we often engage with each other, the persistence of atrocities around the world, the violations of human dignity in the margins of society, the ordinary devastation of losing people we love. All I can say is: I wish we could learn to be better, kinder,…

Within me there lay an invincible summer - by Ashley Zhang

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