Considering a different time

I have spent more than half my life in a post-9/11 world.  I hardly remember how things were before that day.  I am one of the generation who seem to have always lived in this sort of world, with tighter airport security, a war in the middle east, and the constant need to win against an idea.

I don't remember much of that day.  And what I remember could in fact be conflated from several different days or other people's stories.  I don't remember the teachers being distant or sad.  I do remember that one of the teachers had been coming back from some vacation from somewhere in New York State, and his flight was delayed, so he wasn't there that day (or maybe he just got there late.  I don't remember clearly).  My brother and I and another kid from out neighborhood were walking back home together after school, when we saw a Newspaper box.  We glanced at the front page, and the other kid said something about it.  Jesse and I ran the three blocks home to find our mother crying in the living room.  That's my most prominent memory of the day-comforting my mother as she wept, not fully understanding what had happened.

And afterward, in the days and weeks to follow, I remember the flags.  The American flags were everywhere, on every business, on every flag pole.  The message on every sign: "We stand United."  Oh we were very patriotic that first year, those first months.

I've never seen footage of the attacks, only seen pictures.  And I don't think I want to see footage.  I know the attacks happened, and I know our collective lives were changed, I think for the worst.  And I think that's enough for me.

It's not that I'm callous, or unfeeling, or that I don't care that the attacks happened. I do care.  The loss of one life is horrible, but the deaths of so many people is just horrific.  I think the worst part is that it only took a small group of people to change our world.  That's why we are so afraid, why we focus on things like this, even though our chances of dying from a drunk driver or lightning or a stroke or heart disease are much higher.  We are afraid because it only takes one person who doesn't care about their own life to destroy the lives of everyone around them.  And yet, so often, people's lives are destroyed in much less tangible ways by other people who only care about their own lives.

We are afraid because the world turned out to be so much more scary and antithetical to us and the ideas we stand for than we ever suspected.  We are afraid because the rules of war have changed for the worse.  We are afraid because, "with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world" (V for Vendetta)