Today marks the day of the fifth year anniversary of Lauren Johnson’s passing. At age 13 she lost her battle to cancer, leaving a hole in an innumerable amount of hearts in this community. Lauren represented hope, courage, drive, faith, love, grace, poise, joy, wisdom, and zeal. Her passing made many of us realize that, indeed, life is not fair and you never know when you are about to reach the end of your journey on this earth. A reflective post to say the least, this post is more of a culmination of many recent happenings. Yesterday on my way back to campus, I saw a terrible car accident around 27th and Capital Parkway. The police had just began to get to the scene of the crash, naturally chaos was taking place.
I suppose the takeaway from the previous paragraph is that you are never too busy to be reminded that this life is short. The ambiguity, in terms of life’s duration, is what has shaped me to live by the mantra “don’t sweat the small stuff.” Cliché perhaps, this saying possesses a great amount of truth. If time is such an unknown variable, why would you waste this finite resource worrying about “what ifs,” getting angered by little mistakes, and fighting about the pettiest of differences. No my friends, there is more to this life, more that is worth investing your time, effort, and passion in. In sum, this is my two cents for this somber day: endeavor to worry only about what will matter in the long run and enjoy the moment, for that may well be all we have!
SAMHOPEHANSEN 