10-year anniversary (bad word)..........10 years ago 9/11 shocked and rattled the nation, but America proved its character by staying strong in the midst of an attack.
I don't remember much about September 11, 2001. I was 14 and a freshman in high school; like many in my generation I was sitting in class, ready to begin the day, when our principal came on the public address system: there had been an incident in New York; a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center........and the rest, as they say, was history.
I'm not entirely apathetic, I feel terrible for the lives that were lost, especially of those who were innocent and were just going about their business... that really could have been anyone, anyone living in a building, in a city, or in any group of people. It was really a senseless killing: people's precious lives were lost for no reason. However, I can't say I was really that effected by 9/11: I was safe, my parents were safe, my immediate and outside family was safe, no one I knew passed away in 9/11: it really was just a news story for me that got me out of school for a day. Is that really a callous thing to say? A little bit, but it's truthful....I really didn't get rim-rattled by 9/11, I didn't lose sleep over it, no tears were shed. It was a momentous event in history for me. I'm not a very emotional guy now, and I definitely wasn't at age 14. I think back now and yes, I feel terrible, I feel awful about what happened. For me and my generation, I think 9/11 is a great lesson to learn from as we grow and understand the world, and as our understanding of 9/11 evolves so do ourselves: we become the naive kids who thought the U.S.A. was the best country in the world and thus infallible and immune against its eminies to understanding as adults that the real world is no fairy tale: there are evil people with powerful weapons who our dangers to others and are capable of great evils, and we must pay heavy costs to make sure these or similar people are never allowed to do something like 9/11 ever again.
9/11 though, is really profound. The fact that it happened 10 years ago boggles my mind. It makes me worry that the last 10 years went so fast, and you only get about 6 or 7 of these decades.....I've already used up 2.5.......gotta cherish the rest of these. And that's the point. For me, 9/11 is a reminder that anything can happen in life. 9/11 happened on a random Tuesday in mid-September: people were just getting back into the groove of work after summer vacations, Labor Day had just been celebrated with end-of-summer barbecues, the NFL kicked off week 1 of its season and people were just getting over their Monday Night Football hangovers. No one besides a few people knew 9/11 was going to happen; yet something that fundamentally game-changing, that devastating, that costly to human lives, happened in a blink. Makes one cherish life, to go downstairs when living in your parents' home (while unemployed) and talk to them a bit, to go outside and smell the fresh air, to feel alive, do the things you love and love the things you do......because one knows, the next 9/11 might happen tomorrow (not saying it will, FBI please don't arrive at my house).....Life changes, the world changes, and you could be left with nothing, or something that shatters your world forever. In the meantime, you should live your life to the fullest regardless.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
(just wrote one of the more satisfying posts I think I have ever done on this blog, out of the 300 or so posts that have been done here. Let's hope for some more).
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