Dera's Diary

Hello everyone, How's life on your side doing? On mine, COVID has delivered yet another striking blow. Not that this is new or uncharacteristic of COVID; but somehow I manage to be surprised every time. The end of the year is coming and to make sure that all the international boarders can go home, my school is giving people the option of isolating for the rest of the term. I am not going back home this summer because both the UK and my home country have decided to make it extremely difficult for me... so I am not really included in the bracket of people that can isolate. I completely understand why people that are going home would want to isolate, but I can't help but feel a bit sad at the fact that once again COVID is low-key destroying the end of the term. It's easy for me to wish for extremes when all I can do is wish for them, but I do wish that COVID would just end already. I'm getting exhausted with all the it's-getting-betters followed by it's-getting

Hello, I had a pretty interesting conversation with one of my friends last night. I cherish these conversations with her because they are the few times that I feel I am able to actually talk about things. I know that a lot of situations and topics are complex and personal and I won’t pretend to understand the full extent of them. But I find it so sad that we are unwilling to hear each other out, with even the simple things. We are so insistent on having our way, on being right, we can not give each other the courtesy of listening. I’m definitely not perfect, but I’m working on intentionally giving people the chance to breathe. If I really think I believe the right thing, then attacking the other person isn’t going to help them understand. In the same way, if I’m having the conversation just to hear an opposing view, cutting the person off will not let give them the chance to express their opposing beliefs fully. I know that these self expressions can be offensive at times and I can

Hello world, Welcome to June!!! This week, I was reminded of an intresting observation I've made about people in the last year. We are obsessed with control and certainty. Now this isn't always shown in obvious, arrogant ways. Sometimes it's simple and unconscious, hiding behind the things we say and believe. One of the major things that made me feel this way was the way I noticed people use 'objectivity', 'facts', 'logic' and 'reasonable'. Although all these words (for some reason that's beyond me) carry with them a degree of trustworthiness... sometimes, the things we consider as objective or logical just don't make sense... to me anyway. Sometimes we say we just want the facts, but then when we get the facts we don't consider them because we don't want to believe the subject at hand. And some other times we don't have facts and we can only believe what we're being told and we discard such motions as being illogi