It's a Cliché for a Reason

So many song lyrics and thrown about quotes remind us to make the most of life since its time is very limited, and seize the day or as the movie Dead Poets Society frequently repeats its Latin translation "Carpe Diem".  These phrases are used so often most of us hear them and maybe reflect on them for a second or two and just let them go right through our ears, not really giving them a chance to get what they are trying to convey to us.  This is of course understandable since it goes against human nature to have the idea of our own deaths salient in our consciousness constantly.  Many times it takes a tragedy to cause people to sit down and really reflect on their own usage of time here and this is very unfortunate.  A tragedy such as the one that occurred at my home university today.  The death of Declan Sullivan was an unnecessary event that could have easily been prevented if the university used common sense, however, as with everything, it is in the past and cannot be changed, only lamented.

Even though I never knew him, I am dedicating this blog post to Declan, a young man whose soul is now in the hands of the Lord and the thousands of prayers that will be said from Domers across the world.  That being said the current mortality rate of the world is calculated to be .883, meaning 1 out of every 113 people died last year (>150,000 per day).  Without trying to sound insensitive, death is a part of life and will happen to everyone at some point.  Our university is making this a huge deal, mostly due to the fact that Declan died while working for them, but (with no disrespect meant for the life of Declan) people die everyday.  Especially people that we don't know.  A large amount of facebook statuses we posted saying that they were praying for him and his family, but many of these people have no idea who he was, their only connection to him was being part of the Notre Dame family.  I am not saying this is a bad thing only that all his death did was remind those with no other connection to him about the salience of life in general.  The tragedy of death lies all within the timing.  Since it is an event all of us will undertake at some point, and when we are reminded of it through events such as this we are confronted with thoughts of how much more that person could have experienced in their lives before it was cut short of all its potential.  After lamenting that person's loss, our thoughts naturally lead to our own lives (not out of selfishness, just the salience of death) and all of the things we want to accomplish and the unknown things that we will accomplish with the rest of our time.  But, with Declan as an example, this time can be untimely cut short, which leads to the overused but often under-appreciated cliché phrases that remind us to make the most out of the time we are given because we never know how much we have. I urge you readers to take this message to heart, at least for the day, and do something special that makes this day different than the rest.