The Daily O’Collegian

Last week, I probably would have torn apart my room, truck, and my desk at The O’Collegian trying to find the missing class material.

That was last week. Tuesday, I just grabbed a handful of blank pieces of paper and the first pen I could find and went to class.

Last week, things were the way they are supposed to be here at Oklahoma State University.

Now, the way things are supposed to be is gone. The way things are supposed to be is lost forever in a Colorado field, where Saturday’s plane crash took 10 Cowboy lives.

One day, we will all find a new definition of the way things are supposed to be. All we know for sure is that this isn’t it.

People are trying to get back there. The OSU basketball team practiced Tuesday, like it was supposed to.

That’s a step. It’s a tiny step, but it’s a step.

Most of the rest of our lives are nothing close to normal.If things were normal, we wouldn’t ask ourselves “Why?” during every second of the day.

We would not wonder how Dan Lawson could spend one minute in the team van, upset about a lost basketball game, and a few hours later serve to remind us all that losses in sports do not matter at all.

We would not wonder how something like this could happen to Lawson and the nine other Cowboys that fell too soon.

If things were the way they were supposed to be, we would not feel like we live in a state that stands for tragedy.

Nobody in Oklahoma needed to be reminded that we can overcome anything. Everyone knows we can.

Nobody in Oklahoma needed to feel like this state is the center for the country’s biggest heartaches. We know it is not.

But we also know this is not how things are supposed to be.

We see it in everything. Handshakes between friends last a little longer than they are supposed to last. People who are not supposed to be close are hugging each other on a regular basis.

People who are not supposed to cry are shedding tears freely, and nobody thinks twice about it.

It is everywhere, this surreal feeling, as if we are going to wake up in the morning and it will all just be one nightmare, like Cowboy Fredrik Jönzén said Tuesday.

We know it won’t happen, but we hope it will.

Our greatest strength now comes from knowing that everyone is going through this together. We are spending too little time having fun and too much time searching.

Searching for the way things are supposed to be.