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The day, Tuesday September 11, 2001, started just like many others, I got up and prepared to work. This day I was working in the basement of my home to avoid all the distractions of the office. I did not shower, so I was a little bit out of my routine, but I was comfortable because I was already working at six a.m. Early start meant an early finish to the day.
For several hours, I worked uninterrupted. The radio was droning on in the background. Suddenly I hear, “An airplane just hit the World Trade Center.” I continued working as the announcer was relaying what he saw on television. My first thought was “Not again.” Then the announcer said, “There’s another one coming right at the other tower.” My day was just not like any other anymore.
I turned on the television. I thought I was seeing a scene from Jerusalem. It was New York City. Massive violence was no longer something I had read about in history books, nor happened in Beirut and Ireland, it was happening here, in my country.
So many innocent people would die. People who just thought it was “another day.” People who got up and prepared to go to work, maybe even some of them thinking “If I get an early start, I could finish early today.”
I heard the commentator mentioned that the New York skyline had been changed forever. I wondered if the US had been changed forever. Not in my lifetime, nor my parents’ lifetime had a war been fought on our soil. Technically, we have to go back to the Civil War since Hawaii wasn’t a state when World War II hit. Would this one be fought here, or would we chase these intruders across the oceans? My mind goes back to when I was young, and remembered seeing soldiers riding on the highways. Vietnam was going on then, but Vietnam wasn’t in the US. It was in some far away country, we just saw the boys coming and going.
I kept thinking of all the talk you hear of “The Great Generation.” Is the next
”Great Generation” the Generation Xers of the United States? Was it hard times that made great men and women? Did we have the resolve to fight a sly cowardly enemy? Could we, an America that seems deeply divided along socioeconomic lines really unite together?
So many questions without any answers. Why didn’t our intelligence seem to have a clue about any of this? Did we actually provide education for these terrorists? Will there actually be a war or will some covert operation be aimed at our enemies? What is my role? What can I do? Days later and there still seems to be more questions than answers.
What have we learned? We have learned some superficial lessons such as our security is lax. We are learning a lot about ourselves. Church and prayer no longer seem to be unwelcomed words. I have never heard of so many people appreciating their families and friends. “Don’t tread on me” still holds true today. The defiant spirit of the revolutionaries still pounds within our hearts. Attack our freedom and our differing beliefs and we will bond together to defend the idea that we don’t have to agree with each other.
Back in 1776, a man once wrote a document outlining the wishes of a bunch young hopeful colonists, and those unalienable rights are still the rallying cry for a more mature jaded group of United States citizens today, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
September 13, 2001 |
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