What does 9/11 means to me?
This week is special because it’s the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
I’m not sure my life has changed much on the surface as a result of September 11. I am fortunate not to have lost a loved one in the attacks, and this affords me a bit of distance from the tragedy. But although my day-to-day life has not changed dramatically, I feel that I look at things differently now. After getting past the initial shock, anger, and sadness, what remains is a renewed love for life, and a heightened sense of compassion and tolerance. And perhaps those are the best things one could hope for in light of it all.
Before 9/11, I was the kind of person who thought local community doesn’t matter much if we’ve got the internet and tv. The only time I thought about my neighbors was when I hope they wouldn’t bother me.
When the towers fell, I found myself talking to more neighbors in the days after 9/11 than ever before. People said hello to neighbors (next-door and across the city) who they’d normally ignore. People were looking after each other, helping each other, and meeting up with each other. We are being neighborly.
Most people thought that terrorism is designed to make people distrust one another. But an opposite changing of our behavior is a wonderful revolution. 9/11 didn’t make me too scared to go outside or talk to strangers. 9/11 didn’t rig us apart. The towers fell, but we ’rise up’. My heart is getting to be stranger and more compassionate. Everyone knew life would never be the same after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but no one knew exactly how it would change. How has our society come to terms since then?
September 11, 2001 irrevocably changed my life. On September 10, my life was different. I, like I assume most in the beginning, felt safe about our lives, and went along in a kind of fog, the troubles of the world largely ignored and unreported to us. On the 11th, my whole world changed. Suddenly, news that I usually avoided now dominated my television. My world was opened up before me, and I had to take advantage of the opportunity. I had thus began to listen to radio news on a regular basis for news and opinions, and have since become not only a regular radio news listener and contributor, but also a person more interested in the world around me. September 11 was not only a tragic event, it was an eye-opening event for what I hope is many of us.
I’m writing this at a park in the wee early hours of September 11, 2011, the 10th Anniversary of the attack on what I think is the ’American’ in me. Yep; this attack has made me stronger at persisting to ’love away’, to be that ’Statue of Liberty’ to a neighbor, a stranger...even to myself. [Now] to be able to choose to smile which can be more rooted in a Bible verse which insists that "your joy no man (even terrorists) can take from you (me)!" This verse is in the New Testament. Thank God for Jesus Christ. Is he your Savior yet? Ask him into your heart this morning and get to church this Sunday. In God We Trust: ’LET’S ROLL!’ God bless America!
