This past Saturday night, like so many other students, I hopped around fraternities, danced with my friends, ridiculed the hard alcohol ban, fretted over girls, swiped my ID and ate free barbecue — and when I went to sleep, I went with G-d in my heart and G-d’s praises still fresh on my lips.
Saturday night, a boy just like me lay in the suffocating dark, crushed under the rubble and debris of an earthquake a few thousand miles away in Nepal, with his ears begging for his mother’s voice or his sister’s laugh, with his throat choked with dust, with his body broken — and he went in terror to his eternal sleep with G-d in his heart and G-d’s praises still fresh on his lips and fresh in his tears.
It is easy to forget our blessings here and to allow trifles and temptations to define our daily existence. It’s easy to be trivial and self-centered with our stomach full from the Class of 1953 Commons, with our cups overflowing with Keystone and our classrooms packed with the brightest students and professors in the country. It’s easy to count and weigh the blessings of those around us while neglecting our own. This week, though, let’s try to remember that our enchanted lives here are just that — a blessing and a gift.
I could have been that boy. You could have been that boy. But seeing that we are all still here to enjoy this life a little longer, let’s try to merit our blessings, to better the world and to better the lives of those around us — to live for that boy and all the others who passed away this weekend.
