For once in my life, I can say that I am grateful for the existence of Taylor Swift.

As I sat waiting for the super bowl to start, I scoured my mind for blog post topics but kept coming up empty handed. Empty handed, until the camera panned to a certain pop star whom I began to think about instead. I’ve always had a bit of an unreasonable grudge against Taylor Swift, but I don’t mind some of her songs. Me is nice, Look What You Made Me Do is catchy, and you can’t exactly go wrong with Love Story, as it’s about–

(And suddenly, I had my topic.)

—Romeo and Juliet. Tt’s a discussion topic that needs no introduction, as it almost as overdone, understood, and cliche as Travis and Taylor themselves. However, I believe that there’s still worthful content to cover here. It’s not exactly new information to reveal that Shakespear originally intended for this work to show the dangers of not listening to your parents, or to analyze this play from a modern lens and declare Romeo and Juliet’s dynamic to be almost predatory in nature.

No, I’d instead like to focus on a plot point that’s practically just setup for the ill-fated romance: the Montagues and Capulets. The families of Romeo and Juliet respectively, and the people that everyone knows hate each other but nobody knows quite why. Well, as it turns out–no living members of the Montagues and Capulets remember either. While perhaps this was done to keep the focus of the play on the titular characters or critique prestigious Italian families of olden days, I’ve always found this fact more intriguing than anything else in the play. Both families absolutely despite one another, but neither of them knows why.

Again, much can be said about the pointlessness of grudges, as many important things (such as the lives of their children) can be lost in the process, but I believe that even more can be said about the pointlessness of unreasonable grudges. Had one family actually committed some great slight against the other, perhaps the disapproval of Romeo and Juliet’s relationship would be understandable. But the fact of the matter is that each family was simply told that they should hate the other, and neither stopped to question further.

There are times that grudges can be reasonable, or less would be lost keeping it than letting it go. In this case, however, countless other valuable things are lost–potential friendships, opportunities, relationships, and collaborations–and for nothing more than pure pettiness.

This pettiness is what I believe is still prevalent today, and what I’d like to warn against perpetuating. And, as regrettable as it is, the best example I can think of right now is… myself.

I implied earlier in this post that I highly dislike Taylor Swift, but it’s not for many reasons other than over-coverage in the media. But, in my pettiness, I’m missing out–what if she has songs I’d actually like, if I’d stop hating on her long enough to listen? Perhaps I should cast my grudge aside and listen to an album or two, as I’ll never know what I’m missing otherwise.