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Memory of the Future


September 11, 2001 was also a Tuesday. Hopefully today will be far less memorable. Tuesdays tend to be fairly innocuous. Not a dreaded a Monday, a hump day Wednesday, an anticipatory Thursday, or a fun Friday. Tuesdays are supposed to be fairly routine during the traditional work week. People certainly aren't supposed to lose their lives, violently, en masse. Yet, that is what happened seventeen years ago today, a day that no one who lived through it will be likely to forget.

That Tuesday began just as seemingly innocent as this Tuesday. When it was over, so many were dead, others in mourning, a nation sent reeling, and those of us -- the supremely vast majority -- who'd survived the day were left in a state of fear, despair and even anger. I remember going to bed that night thankful to be alive, but also frightened for how long that might be for. The day had, among other things, been a reminder of how quickly and violently life can be ended.

The week that followed featured some of the best and worst I've seen from our nation. All of the planes were grounded over U.S. air space. President Bush delivered not only an address from the oval office, but also his rousing speech from atop the rubble of the World Trade Center. There was, among some, a sense of coming together. I also witnessed, just a couple of days after the attacks, an African-American man walking down the street who made a 'throat-slitting' gesture across his neck, while staring at a car with what looked to be a family of Middle Eastern descent.

Of course, 9/11 opened the door for reactivating war with Iraq, and our involved conflict in the Middle East that continues to this day. Many first responders who were on the scene that day, selflessly helping others and saving so many lives, have either died or fallen ill from exposure to whatever was flying around the air when the towers came down. The creeping remnants of that one day are still with us, both physically and psychologically.

I hope we've become better people because of the events of September 11th, though sometimes I despair a little. The effects, both mental and tangible, still linger. I think we've attempted to overcome the heavy dread of that day, along with the after-effects of the intervening years, though it hasn't been easy. Now there is another generation, almost adults, who know of September 11th only through what they're told, or the footage they may have watched.

We tend to look back on major, critical events in terms of what happened. We know that Pearl Harbor was bombed, that JFK was assassinated in Dallas, and that planes flew into buildings in New York and DC, but I think it's important for us to share how we felt, as well, while we're still here. We need to tell the human side of these stories, like how I went to bed that night more afraid than I'd ever been in my life, how I couldn't imagine what it must have been like for those who died earlier in day, and how the last few months of 2001 seemed to take forever to end.

Once 2001 was over, there was some sort of mental dam that broke within me. It was cathartic. Finally, we were done with that wretched year. Of course, we've never quite been done with it, have we? Nothing in life -- not even the smallest things, let alone the most major of events -- exist in a vacuum. We are continually defined by what transpires, and how we answer what is done to us. It is sometimes easier to respond to things from a place of fear, rather than love.

The fear was potent that day. It seemed to permeate every nook and cranny. But fear is not a sustainable emotion. We (should) grow beyond it. Seventeen years on, I hope we have done so, or are at least working on it. We should, as a rejoinder to those who launched the attacks, do our best to live as happily as possible. We owe it to those who didn't make it past that day.


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