Everything stopped. Everything changed. Nothing has ever been close to the same again. The feeling of helplessness still lingers with me seventeen years after the fact. I suppose I will never be able to move along past the moments when those airplanes hit those towers. I suppose the reason I am stuck in New York City has to do with the fact I lived and played in New York for six years. Some of my most cherished memories took place on top of those towers. I suppose I am stuck there because the events of that day began in New York City, and I am stuck there wondering why this had to happen. The hit to the Pentagon shocked me. The heroic acts committed in Pennsylvania humbled me. Their example of courage and love should rest in our hearts and give us the courage to do smaller acts of courage and love. I know that everything stopped in that moment and what followed was like a horrible dream from which I cannot awake.
I long for the time when we as a people were not afraid. I long for the time when we could hold civil conversations with people who do not agree with our perspective. I know part of me still lives in the pre-September 11 world. I suppose this is how grief functions. When we experience loss, perhaps the difficulty is that part of us remembers the time before the loss and longs to live that way again. We live then in a dissonance with reality. As long as we are aware to the nature of grief and memory, we can move on and begin to accept the reality for how we must now live.
Loss teaches us lessons all the time. Sometimes the loss can remind us of how we can live. Perhaps we can take the love we once felt and use this to mold the new reality we must now face. With the loss of September 11, we could begin to live life unafraid. Perhaps we could remember those who gave their lives on that day so other might live free of tyranny, and allow others to hold differing views. We could once again be a nation where we hold conversations so that we can come to a meeting of the mind. Let us not allow fear and loss take us away from who we are and who we can be. Perhaps everything stopped and changed forever, but still we can loosen our grip on the fear and grief the past might hold and move forward in courage and love.
I long for the time when we as a people were not afraid. I long for the time when we could hold civil conversations with people who do not agree with our perspective. I know part of me still lives in the pre-September 11 world. I suppose this is how grief functions. When we experience loss, perhaps the difficulty is that part of us remembers the time before the loss and longs to live that way again. We live then in a dissonance with reality. As long as we are aware to the nature of grief and memory, we can move on and begin to accept the reality for how we must now live.
Loss teaches us lessons all the time. Sometimes the loss can remind us of how we can live. Perhaps we can take the love we once felt and use this to mold the new reality we must now face. With the loss of September 11, we could begin to live life unafraid. Perhaps we could remember those who gave their lives on that day so other might live free of tyranny, and allow others to hold differing views. We could once again be a nation where we hold conversations so that we can come to a meeting of the mind. Let us not allow fear and loss take us away from who we are and who we can be. Perhaps everything stopped and changed forever, but still we can loosen our grip on the fear and grief the past might hold and move forward in courage and love.
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