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By Sawyer Depp
Admittedly, I do not follow the Royal Family of the British throne. Unlike Roman or Greek history, it just has never captivated me. When I heard that Queen Elizabeth II had passed, I was sad. But I was sad as any person would be when they hear that someone has passed and must, for a moment, empathize for those that were close to them.
Queen Elizabeth died on September 8. That night, I sat down with my roommate and we began to talk. Somehow or another, the Queen entered our conversation, and he began to tell me about how the Premier League had canceled all of their matches for the entire week in order to mourn. At first, he said he was frustrated. This was just the second week of the league, and he wanted to see Leeds play—supposedly, they have several American players.
To this point, I thought, Of course, we Americans only care about the Queen’s death because we can’t watch our soccer players for one week. How tragic. But then he paused. His tone changed a bit.
He asked me, “What would it ever take to make America stop like that? For one week? Just stop and mourn? Pause and think?”
My immediate answer was 9/11, and I was right. The last time that every major sport in America took a week to mourn was due to September 11, 2001. Twenty-one years ago. Following the tragedy, the next MLB game would not be played until September 16, and the next NFL game would not be played until the 23rd.
I believe that some conversations happen at some times for certain reasons. And sometimes events happen at certain moments because they were meant to happen when they were and where they were. And sometimes a thought pops itself into your head as you are trying to think of a topic for a blog post because it was a thought you were meant to think. The Queen died three days before the anniversary of 9/11. Three days.
I believe this all was meant to call my mind to a question: Why must we only pause for tragedy? Why are we always on the run? We are given so little life to live and we so often spend our days running in place. We run just to run when taking a moment to sit will get us much further than our feet will.
So often, we refuse to think. Day by day, moment by moment, we fill our lives with endless noise. From our phones, from our jobs, from our school. So we run from place to place and never take a moment to pause.
Why must it take tragedy to awaken us from this coma?
We will forget tragedy. I can remember the days when I spent nearly the entire day of class discussing and watching videos about the tragedy of September 11, 2001. This year, I saw only a few posts. Sadly, the same will likely happen with the passing of Queen Elizabeth. And we will slip deeper into the coma than we were before.
So don’t let tragedy be the only moment that you pause.
It is a funny thing, but I suppose what I am doing is urging you to wake up by sitting down. Wake up by slowing down. Wake up by stopping. And wake up to think. With the bustle of our daily lives, it can be so easy to forget to really reflect. It can be so easy for us to enter the coma of the mundane and march on without a single thought ever crossing our minds. When you do finally stop, I cannot tell you what to think about, but if you stop — truly stop — what was meant to be thought will find your mind.
Sawyer Depp, a member of the McConnell Scholars Class of 2024, is pursuing a major in Political Science and History with a minor in Creative Writing at the University of Louisville.