Photo sent by Naya Rivera helped her search 1:56
Editor's Note: Peggy Drexler is a psychologist, researcher, and author of "Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers, and the Changing American Family" and "Raising Boys Without Men." She is currently working on another book on how women are conditioned to compete with each other and what to do about it. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author. See more opinions at CNNEE.com/Opinión.
(CNN) - Actress Naya Rivera, perhaps best known for her role as Santana Lopez in the Fox drama "Glee," was found dead after a six-day search to disappear into a California lake, authorities said.
He was 33 years old and is leaving a 4 year old son. The boy was found asleep in the rental boat after his return was delayed. A life jacket was found in the boat and the boy was wearing another.
The disappearance had a great impact: in the news, on social networks and in other cultural spaces. People cannot avoid the horror in their eyes at the apparent death of a young and beautiful person.
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Then there is also the strangeness that she would be the third among the show's actors, who apparently dies at a very young age. Actor Cory Monteith died in 2013 of a drug overdose, and the same was true of Mark Salling, who apparently committed suicide in 2018.
While we mourn Rivera's loss, we can't help but evaluate our own lives and perhaps ask ourselves some questions.
Facing death or even the idea is never easy. However, there is something especially tragic in the death of someone young, because it forces us to consider everything lost in a life that has not been fully lived.
With celebrities, sentiment can increase because, after all, they are viewed as larger than life and often present us with an idealized picture of a life to which we might aspire.
Rivera began acting at the age of 4 in the program "The Royal Family". During his nearly three-decade career, he appeared on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," "Family Matters," "The Bernie Mac Show," "Baywatch," "CSI: Miami," and many other shows, including "Glee." .
Still, at 33 he was supposed to have a great career ahead of him.
Her story is particularly jarring at a time when emotions related to illness and death are most important to most of us.
We lived for months with the coronavirus pandemic, and that has led many of us to contemplate mortality: how short -and tenuous- life is, how we want to live the time we have left and that its duration, perhaps has never been more clear, it is completely unknown.
Someone's death reminds us: what have we not done? What could we be doing? Should we re-prioritize our lives? And we've seen a lot of that already this time, during the blockade and estrangement of our families, friends and jobs.
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For many, stepping back from typically busy lives has given them an opportunity to wonder if those lives are the ones they really want to live, and if not, what changes are they willing to make.
At the same time, the sudden death of another can help us reconsider how much we "need to know" about what our lives hold for us and stop making rigid plans.
People are programmed to plan and worry about the future. But what the covid-19 has shown us, and what the young death of this young woman puts us ten times more forward, is that we cannot know what will happen tomorrow. Learning to live in the now becomes essential.
When we talk about death in this context or at any time in life, it is key to understand that emotions will vary, but we must feel them - and not avoid them - to better process and deal with pain.
Such emotions can include pain, confusion, anger, regret. They are not necessarily comfortable emotions, but they must be experienced. How they are experienced on any given day will differ from the next. The goal of living one day at a time may sound cliche, but it's true.
Unfortunately, there is no modern and elegant way to deal with the idea of death, there is no quick fix or easy solution. There is no good way to understand what is often unimaginable: how, for example, a young mother with so many resources and possibilities can, in the blink of an eye, cease to exist.
Naya Rivera