Some 9/11 musings
9/11 is a hard anniversary for me. I suppose there’s something about being forced to watch the public execution of thousands of innocent people that does something to you. It did something to me. YouTube advented when I was 13 and with it came an extraordinary access to the events of 9/11, as clip after clip became available through the service to be rewatched with convenience. And so I would sit there and watch. And watch. And watch. Over and over again. I didn’t really know what it meant, but part of me was wise enough to recognize that those videos represented something extremely significant. At first I only saw the buildings, the explosions, the planes, the city, the physical objects involved, but as I grew older my reference to these events changed and I began to realize that beneath the veneer of these meaningless physical objects there were people. Not anyone famous, not anyone extraordinary, just….people. Mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, friends and family, loved ones, people who were punished with death for the crime of merely showing up to work or taking a cross-country trip.
And when I realized that, I suddenly understood the significance of 9/11, for me, and perhaps for others too. Human tragedies of all sorts are the norm for life, but this particular tragedy, for its visibility, for its utter depravity, and for how it strikes directly at what it means to be American, and to be a human going about life and brutally interrupted….it lingers.
There’s goodness in that. I was sheltered from trauma as a child, and from the comfort and safety of my computer I could approach it and turn it off at will, study it, analyze it safely. What a blessing that I could experience this trauma at will, and not have it forced on me by my circumstances!
But trauma it is. And it hurts, man. It hurts to relive it. To relive that realization, to watch those videos again and hear the explosions and the screams and cries and the terror and to see thousands of innocent lives snuffed out in an instant and thousands more jeopardized by the cancerous dust...I wasn’t there, I had no one I knew involved directly in the events of that day. I was just a kid thousands of miles away, in a flyover state of no importance. The events happened and life went on, I went on attending school and coming home to my family and growing up. And yet something changed for me, and for all of us that day, and I don’t know if I will ever get over it.
And when I realized that, I suddenly understood the significance of 9/11, for me, and perhaps for others too. Human tragedies of all sorts are the norm for life, but this particular tragedy, for its visibility, for its utter depravity, and for how it strikes directly at what it means to be American, and to be a human going about life and brutally interrupted….it lingers.
There’s goodness in that. I was sheltered from trauma as a child, and from the comfort and safety of my computer I could approach it and turn it off at will, study it, analyze it safely. What a blessing that I could experience this trauma at will, and not have it forced on me by my circumstances!
But trauma it is. And it hurts, man. It hurts to relive it. To relive that realization, to watch those videos again and hear the explosions and the screams and cries and the terror and to see thousands of innocent lives snuffed out in an instant and thousands more jeopardized by the cancerous dust...I wasn’t there, I had no one I knew involved directly in the events of that day. I was just a kid thousands of miles away, in a flyover state of no importance. The events happened and life went on, I went on attending school and coming home to my family and growing up. And yet something changed for me, and for all of us that day, and I don’t know if I will ever get over it.
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