“Life is precious.”

That’s what my mom said to me after relating the news that my cousin Logan is in a coma following an accident at work yesterday.

You think we’d have learned this by now, what with my sister Kirby‘s unexpected and untimely death a year and a half ago. It’s so easy, though, to get caught up in the everyday and lose sight of the bigger picture.

Life is precious. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or even five minutes from now, so you need to take full advantage of every minute.

Why, then, do we squander so much time–fulfilling immediate but petty inclinations, dreaming without any likelihood of actually acting, or obsessing about inconsequential details?

Why am I sitting here, not quite satisfied with where I am in my life but maybe not trying hard enough to change it?

Not sure. But all I really want to do is curl up on the couch with a blanket and a book to let my mind slip away for a while, and hope that maybe tomorrow the weather will be nicer, I’ll have more energy and my cousin will regain consciousness.

I’ve learned that things don’t always happen for a reason. We have to create reason out of things that happen. It is an effort, though, to do this and not just sink into numbness. And it takes time, especially in the face of so immediate and crushing a situation. You can’t fix it–only hope and pray that it will work out.

So please pray for my cousin and his family, or send positive thoughts or whatever you do to appeal to that force in the world that brings about things we can’t control. That’s all we’ve got at a time like this. Thanks.

Big Sky Over Loyola from my senior year dorm