Becky's Blog: 9/11 on a Personal Note

September 11th isn't about a terrorist attack to me. Yeah, I know that's what caused it. But for some reason I just have to focus on letting the fact sink in that it's possible in our world to kill 3,000 people at once just because. I know there have been many many other instances in the history of the world where more than 3,000 people died when something happened; 9/11 is kind of close to my heart though--probably because I was young when it happened, and it was the first time I'd really understood something awful and huge happening in the world on a personal level. To me, 9/11 is an example of the atrocities the world is capable of. Obviously, yes, historically it's important for us to know that on September 11, 2001 terrorist members of the Al Queda group were responsible for crashing 2 planes into the World Trade Center towers, another into the Pentagon, and another in Pennsylvania. And it's important for us to know why they apparently hate America and feel the need to "teach us a lesson." But to me, the most important part isn't the details of who caused it or when, but how American people and the people of the world responded emotionally. I'm glad that the majority of our human society was appalled by what happened. I'm glad that the world isn't so far gone that we can't connect over the horror of 3,000 people being murdered. I'm glad it's still wrong for something like that to happen--with all the crime and hate in the world, all the uncaring people, all the people who have no care what happens to others, or what happens to society as a whole, or how much we degrade ourselves-- I'm glad that we aren't desensitized so much that we can't come together and realize when we've lost something (the majority of us, anyway).

I always want to remember sitting in 8th grade Algebra, doing my morning worksheet, and having something so important come on the TV that my uncaring, basketball coaching, smelly math teacher knew a room of thirty 13-year-olds needed to see--needed to feel what was happening together. All of my teachers let the students talk with each other about what was happening and how we were feeling throughout the day. And I like to think they let us do that not just because we need to know what happened, but because we needed to internalize how it impacted us individually and as a group. We needed to know how we would respond as the younger generation of the world to harm and the psychological, emotional pain of losing something many of us had never seen before--of losing something that to many of us was intangible. I'd never been to New York City, or to Washington DC. I'd never met anyone who I knew may even be IN one of the towers, or even in the city at the time. I'm sure that was the case for the majority of my classmates. And yet, we still cried. I'm proud that we banded together to dive into the new feelings we were having--and to gain an appreciation for the beauty of our human race and complexity. I'm glad we could recognize the loss of life--the loss of a group of conscious people, who were breathing and thinking, and who had families and friendships--and the suffering they all must have been going through--that there are actual people on the other side of the country, living their lives, just like I am. That's what there is to learn from historical events, I think. And 9/11 was the first time I'd really had the chance to internalize that. It helped me open myself to feeling the personal experiences that other people must have gone through during other historical events. I hope experiences like 9/11 do the same for everyone else in the world, so we can be a more humane, sympathetic, and sensitive society as a whole, and that we can think about the people, not just the event.

I love finding pictures of people on historic dates.

September 11, 2001