This week, I've been thinking about 9/11, and everything that has happened these last 7 years. I've been seeing all the ways people are remembering.
For me, 9/11 was an especially significant event. I was only eight years old, and it's the first major event I can remember really clearly. I have grown up in this new post 9/11 era.
On that morning, I woke up early before school to watch cartoons. When I turned on the TV though, it was news. I started watching at the point just before the second plane hit. And when it did, all it took for me to freak out were the words "America is being attacked" in the worried voice of the newscaster, who seemed to be confused as to what was going on and what would happen next. Everyone was, but it was strange for me for some important adult to be that way. So I ran for my brother, to wake him up with the news. At some point my mom also joined us in front of the TV.
I begged my mom to let me stay home from school but I in the end I went. I remember taking in the unusual mood. School was a lot emptier than usual - a lot of parents kept their kids home. The teachers all seemed kind of shell-shocked, and a few of the kids. But I also remember being truly puzzled that so many of them had been kept by their parents from knowing what was going on. I just couldn't imagine how something like this could be covered up.
The main feeling for me though, was incredulity. Before then, I had thought America was basically invincible. I was a rude awakening for me to realize that really, we were just like the rest of the world. There was nothing really that separated Americans from the other people of the world, nothing that made us less vulnerable to the same things happening here that happen anywhere else.
So I guess what I'm saying is, while so many people were feeling so strongly American, I have never felt so much a global citizen. And I feel like, although I didn't pay much attention to it at the time, in retrospect our going to war is just that much more surprising. That event made me feel so together with humanity, I wonder how people could have seen the same event and been inspired to go kill people. It made me want to be peaceful and mourn. How could people think anything different? How could the response be, war, war, war?
And that's just what I think. What I still wonder 7 years later. How did we get to where we are today? What was it really like, before? For so much of my life, we have been mired in war, I wonder what happened to us. And how can it be different....