I was in my freshman year of high school when the attack took place, and for the next few years, I can remember always thinking about how we needed to get back at the people who did this, while at the same time wondering if it would happen again. I was on the West Coast, the complete other side of the country, and to be honest, in many ways, it wasn't very real to me. The loss of lives, the chaos, the destruction, and the resulting events that have been taking place since then. Now that I'm a little older, when I stop to think on what happened, it is more real to me and makes more sense, but I start to wonder, too, about how I have changed and how we as a country may have changed.
The most obvious changes right away were increased security and a pervasive sense of fear and vulnerability. We were America, the world powerhouse, safe and invulnerable on this side of the world away from all the chaos happening around the world. We no longer were that. And as a result, in many ways, we got meaner and more distant, from one another and from people around the world. We saw danger everywhere. We no longer wanted people who thought differently than us coming near us. Anyone who looked suspicious could be there to hurt us.
We also focused a lot on the lives of those who were lost. We grew close as a nation, as people bound in a common loss and hurt. Our pride was bruised, our families wounded, and American people and heroes had been killed. We found healing and strength in one another, we found hope in a better tomorrow through that unity that comes from tragedy. We found a renewed determination to become better and stronger and to never forget the loss that had inspired this.
Thirteen years later, I look around, and part of me wonders if we have forgotten all that we learned, all that we felt, all that we decided we would do and become. In some ways, it is the inevitable result of the generation shift. There are teenagers now who were born after the events of that day took place. There are people approaching voting age who know about what happened only from history textbooks. To them, it's just another Pearl Harbor - something that happened before their time that was a tragedy, but has had no significant impact in their lives because they didn't experience it. That isn't their fault, it's just reality. But what about the rest of us?
I see a public divided on politics, on lifestyles, on our position in the world, on race, on how we should deal with people who are trying to come into our country, on the substances we partake of, on the safety of our identities online, and on how we should view ourselves. I see and hear fewer and fewer comments on the world-shaking event that took place, only side mentions of heightened security due to possible threats because of what day it is. I see less of the strength we found as a nation, united in our way, and more fracturing over just what that way is. I hear less about how to become a stronger country and more about how to become a less involved country, while somehow trying to be an open country. I see confusion, distrust, anger, and pride taking the foreground in the daily life of America.
I also see compassion, happiness, unity, and courage where it wasn't before. Those who went and fought, instead of being reviled and spit up, are now being welcomed home and helped to find a place in a society that is striving to remember all that they have and continue to give to protect us. I see efforts to promote greater understandings of those who have different ideals than we do, who think differently than we do, and who believe differently than we do. I see efforts to create a better world to live in, that may be free of the hurts of the world before the events of that day.
We have all changed in some way, big or small, from the events of that day. Some have been good, and some have been less positive. Some continue to be felt, and some were quick to fade away. How we continue to remember and to change is entirely up to us. We can make positive changes as we remember those who lost their lives that day and since, or we can forget and possibly make negative decisions that will cost us again in the future. We can become a more unified and united America, or we can grow divided and splintered. We can live in happiness and hope, or we can scurry about in fear and perpetual worry and anger. The choice is entirely up to us.
Wherever we go in the coming years, may we always remember, and may it change us for the better.
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