Today I received the shocking and saddening news that one of my friends, a guy who I had shared a dorm floor and many memories with, had passed due to complications from a bout with swine flu.
It’s a weird thing when someone so close to your own age passes away. Older people are supposed to pass away, after long fulfilling lives full of many memories, not a young vibrant 25-year-old who was just starting to make his mark on the world. For me, it’s an extremely focusing thing. It’s like an interlude during a grand play - a moment when you can sit and digest what you have just seen and heard.
I didn’t know Justin as well as many of my friends who are now grieving, since I was a freshman when he was an outgoing senior, but he definitely made a significant impact. I remember him as one of the most welcoming, gracious, funny, and intelligent people I had met and, as a young, nervous, clueless college freshman, a friend was exactly what I needed. As I’m reading some of the things people have written on Facebook about Justin, I’m struck that no one has been mentioning how much money he had, or the kind of car he drove, or how popular he was. Instead, I see words like “love,” “caring,” and “generous” being used quite a lot. That’s pretty striking.
We (and by we, I mean my stupid cynical generation) often turn up our noses when we hear people utter the old cliche that “you can’t take it with you.” I don’t think hearing and rehearing this mantra makes us change our behavior all that much. However, when something tragic or shocking happens - when someone so young and close to us is taken from us - it can maybe make this idea a little more clear. Call it a twisted object lesson.
Regina Spektor has some lyrics from one of her recent songs that says “No one laughs at God in a hospital/No one laughs at God in a war/No one’s laughing at God/When they’re starving or freezing or so very poor.” That’s deep. Think about it. Think of everything we’ve complained about recently - we don’t have a job, or we don’t have the right job, or we don’t have the right car, or we don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend, etc., etc., etc.
If you asked a lot of people what the defining moment of their last decade was, a lot of them would probably say September 11th. That was most certainly a tragic day for our nation, but, I was 15, pretty self-absorbed, and, if I’m honest, the whole sequence of events was surreal enough that it hardly had an effect on me. (Please understand, though, that I’m not minimizing the horrific nature of the events.)
Instead, on April 16th, 2007, a gunman walked into Virginia Tech University and murdered 32 people. That rocked me to my core. I think I spent literally hours pouring over the news media, survivor stories, and memorials dedicated to the events. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that 32 of my peers - average college students - had woken up and gone to class on a day which would turn out to be their last. Suddenly, all the insignificant stuff that I had thought was ending my world seemed like a string of horribly misplaced priorities.
April 16th was a day that I will always remember. On April 24th, myself and a couple of friends held a benefit concert at our school for Save Darfur, a concert that would eventually birth my current non profit effort Rock for Justice. I’ve never told anyone this really (though I guess I am revealing it now), but the tragedy of Virginia Tech directly influenced my decision to start Rock for Justice. If it’s possible for one person to experience an instant transformation, I think I experienced something close. Where I was previously absorbed with achieving some mythical dream of fame and fortune, I now couldn’t shake from my mind the brevity of life and the importance in positively affecting all the people I could. A lot of times, people will ask me about why I started Rock for Justice, and I’ll give some ambiguous reason about combining my passions for music and art with social justice. That’s partly true, but, honestly, the real reason is that I don’t think I can bear to waste any more of the precious time I’ve been given. 32 people I had never met who went to a school I have never visited touched me in a way I never thought I would be touched. When I hear of people like Justin Key - a good man, a man of integrity, someone who certainly didn’t deserve to go so early - it just strengthens this resolution.
I want to bring this rather long blog post full circle, because this shouldn’t be about me in any sense. My friend Justin is an example of someone I look up to and an aspiration of the type of person I want to be. He touched so many people with the short time he had on earth. I guess, what I’m saying, is that when something tragic like this happens - what should we do? Do we pause to grieve briefly before returning to our daily self-centered routine? Or can it be enough to jar our perspective, even a little?
An Interlude (thoughts on how to live in tragedy)
