Lana Ulrich's column, "Tragedies encourage reflection for students," March 23, was a gust of fresh air. I am encouraged to see The Daily Collegian considering profound issues like death and encouraging reflection on life.

Ulrich posed several difficult questions, one of which was "why did these things happen?" She went on to specify her aim in the column, "to examine and obtain some sort of meaning behind or lesson from these tragedies."

I appreciate her honesty. As I said before, it is most definitely refreshing, but in order to answer her questions, we must first go to the questions behind them. To find meaning in tragedy we must evaluate our world views to see if they support the notion. If life is not valuable, death cannot be tragic.

Loss helps us evaluate the consistency of our actions. Death cannot be tragic if we subscribe to a belief that does not give life meaning, nor can we discern why we die if we do not know why we live. Death presents all of us with the opportunity to reflect on what it means to be alive. We must answer, are we truly living?