9/11

The questions that don't really have answers sometimes leave us in a place of unsettled injustice. These questions make us stumble away from our innocence scathed by factors that we had no hand in. The life we lead brings us to these places with the distant hopes that the courage, strength and love that it takes to be a hero is an instinct and not a procedure. Nine years after the planes struck the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in New York City, we are still left with questions that are not answered. Questions that make us wonder why humans throughout history have felt the need to kill and destroy.

Looking over a slideshow of photos posted on a media outlet on the internet a couple of days ago brought tears to my eyes and a pain in the pit of my stomach for those men and women lost on that horrible day. Seeing those photos rekindled a pain for the survivors of these men and women, a thankfulness for the brave men and women who went to Ground Zero to risk their lives to save others and a renewed since of pride in our country. A country that always heals but never forgets, a land of hearts and helping hands, a people of strangers willing to come together when the chips fall and on that day unlike any other … the chips fell.

Spending the weekend with good friends the date 9/11 was brought up a few times, somberly, as we looked back on where we were on that day. Flashbacks of news coverage and photos plastered on every media outlet known to man were only ideas tossed around in our heads compared to those that had to witness this horrible event. Not to mention those that were in the towers. A day that claimed thousands of lives goes down in history and as we remember it is hard to believe that something this terrible could ever happen.

Unfortunately, we live in a world that terrible things like this do happen. Ideas and misunderstandings can become so extreme that such things have happened throughout all of history. Lives that have been taken for reasons that seem to have no merit. Murders, acts of violence, terrorists attacks and wars represent a push for power that involves fear, bullying, and distain for humanity. I remember clearly the discomfort and anxiety that I felt in the days following September 11, 2001. I remember firefighters and policemen searching the rubble in New York, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania. Thoughts that only lead us to more questions and less answers. Thoughts that make us wince and give us hope for better a understanding of why we need to do such things. Why we as people, why nations, and cultures feel the need to shift our weight in such way. Answers to questions that we may never understand, and truthfully, if we did it may reveal a part of the human psyche that would scare us and disgust us even more.

No matter what these questions do to us, and no matter how many times they arise in our minds, it is my hope that they never allow us to lose hope in the goodness that is in the world. I hope that we don't ask these questions to lay further blame or to validate these unknowns. I hope that we ask these questions to gain a truer knowledge of ourselves. I know we will never forget that day and the days that followed. Those moments in time that have been engrained in our memories that represent some of our darkest fears. Fears that fade away but come back like phantoms from the past as if to remind us that we are all mortal and that we do not know what the future holds. I hope that as we continue to remember and as we remember I hope we continue to heal.