What if nothing was ever lost?

For over a year, I have been using this forum to practically write whatever I wanted to, from why I was qualified to write for this paper to an absurdly sarcastic description of our current President's accomplishments. Not one to rest on laurels I haven't deserved, there are still a great deal of other topics I would like to write about before next month, when you no longer get the "enjoyment" of these mostly non-current event opinion pieces. That being said, I planned on using this week to write about an activity the majority of us participate in, for I have more than 3 years of various experiences of partaking in said activity. However, my plans changed drastically on Sunday night, along with a great deal of my thoughts. The reason for this shift is the same reason why the flags around campus are currently at half mast, the recent death of two our students.

I understand with that last sentence I have just reopened the proverbial flood gate of emotions for some members of this community, and for that, I sincerely apologize. I will ensure that the remainder of this article will not be an inspired diatribe of any religious activity designed to comfort mourners, for I haven't lost all of my humility. Nor will this article try to attempt to be any form of memorial for the recently deceased; I am not the right person to embark in such a venture. Furthermore, I am not writing to offer any advice to the members of this community that are currently in mourning; once again, I am not qualified to do such a thing.

A death close to home seems to have a profound effect on us; even if its effects do not last indefinitely.

With all of that being said, I doubt that anybody that has the ability to interpret these black shapes is unaware that at some point they will perish from this earth. Thankfully or regrettably, our society does deal with this subject of human mortality quite often. For instance, in "No Country for Old Men," Anton Chigurh murders countless individuals. This extremely violent movie just got an even more proverbial seal of approval when it received the Oscar for best picture. Instead of the audience being mortified at the sight of all of this loss of human life, we think all of the killing is cool (or extremely deep and thought provoking, depending on your disposition). However, the audience is aware that all of the violence in this film is simulated, but the news is a different thing. I have often heard of various shootings in downtown Indianapolis, or scores of Iraqi citizens dying in some kind of attack. Even though I doubt many people enjoy hearing this sort of news, we seem to care a great deal more if we personally know the individual who has died. For, if we mourned every loss of human life that we heard about, we would have to purchase a Johnny Cash-like wardrobe.

Now with the reason why I wrote this article, a death close to home seems to have a profound effect on us; even if its effects do not last indefinitely (we eventually seem to "get over" it and go about our lives "normally"). These events change our mood dramatically, they cause us to reexamine the way we interact with others, and as a byproduct cause a deluge of thoughts concerning the possibility of our own deaths among many other things. I don't think I am going out on a limb when I believe the thoughts concerning this topic are naturally not very pleasant. You might start thinking about if you have accomplished everything in your life that you have set out to do (which is more often not the case), about how the people around you will deal with your passing, or the little problem with the entire uncertainty of what is in store for yourself. However, the most unpleasant thought is that we will simply cea