( )

I think it was in one of my sociology classes last year that I first learned what "collective effervescence" meant. Basically, it's the what happens when a lot of people get together for the same purpose, to achieve a certain common goal.
Superbowl is an example for example. Everyone gets together in the same room, and while you may not be as moved or hyped up if you were watching the game alone in your apartment, your feelings are much more heightened when you share the same experience, the same excitement, the same feelings with the people around you.
Funerals are another.

***

Two days ago, I attended a ceremony for one of our friends who passed away exactly last week today. It wasn't a funeral, but a ceremony to celebrate her "beautiful, brief life". Those were the words someone used at the ceremony, and for some reason the word "brief" really moved me.
It's a beautiful word, brief. To the point, succinct, but not enough. And I think it's the last part of that definition that gives it a melancholic connotation.
I didn't know Arya in person, but I didn't think I needed to. The fact that she was friends with my friends, that we lived in such close proximity to each other, that she was a girl my age was enough reason for me to celebrate her life with her mother, sister, uncle, 'brother', and friends.
We all walked into one of the largest rooms on campus, recently used for recruitment purposes very frequently, but this time for a very different purpose. To imagine that she must have been in that room many times herself...
It was a very strange feeling.

Her family members and a couple of friends got up to tell stories about her. Some of them were very strong, and some could not hold back their tears. In the midst of all this, I found myself sitting amongst all of my friends most of whom I hadn't met, warm, salty tears running down my cheeks as if it was my best friend whose picture was standing in front of the room, her huge smile greeting everyone in the room.
Many things went through my mind during that ceremony.
It was interesting to see how nothing seemed to matter. Tests, jobs, the worry and stress and rush that comes with all of those... Everybody had left those things to wash away with the rain outside.

***

When I came home that night, I kept thinking about one thing.
Such beautiful stories were told about Arya that night, and I couldn't help but wonder what my friends and family would say if it were my ceremony instead of hers.

Every day that I am lucky enough to wake up and make it to the end to go to bed, I hope to act in ways that would make the stories being told about me as beautiful as I would hope them to be.