Five Years Later

"Courage…is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow." – Dorothy Thompson

 
 
I, like everyone else, remember that day like it was yesterday. 
 
I had a full load of classes that day, so I was up early.  I’d made a habit out of getting dressed with the sounds of a local radio talk show in the background.   Usually, it’s a lighthearted show…lots of laughs and crude jokes.  That day, though, they were uncharacteristically somber.   I decided I’d better listen closer.  The leader of the show recapped the events I’d missed.
 
A plane had collided with one of the World Trade Center buildings.   At first, there were reports that it was an accident.   Then, a plane hit the other tower.  This was no accident.
 
I woke my stepdad first.  We watched the images of the burning towers.  He kept saying, "Oh my God…" over and over again.  I was silent.  We watched until the first tower collapsed.   In silence, he got up and went to wake up my mom.
 
I went to class.
 
Actually, to say I went to class is a bit of an overstatement. I went to the campus…I sat in a desk…but I was not in class.   My mind was 3000 miles away.
 
I sat through my first class….by now I was numb…in a daze.  Everything seemed so surreal.   It was almost as if I was floating around…neither here nor there.  It was like being in one of those dreams that you know you’re in, but you never actually see or feel yourself.
 
Midway through my second class, someone came in and told us all to leave.  Classes had been cancelled.   In fact, everyone was told to leave campus entirely.  So I went home.
On the way, I sat on the bus trying somehow to process the words and images I had heard so far that day.   
 
A terrorist attack had taken place on American soil—in MY country.  That stuff wasn’t supposed to happen here.   There had been the loss of thousands of lives…the destruction of national landmarks.  How could this happen?  Who could do something like this?  The whole time, in the back of my mind, one sentence I had heard an hour earlier echoed. 
 
My newswriting instructor, after seeing the obvious distant looks on our faces, told us, "I know we’d all rather be somewhere else right now, but if you want to be a writer, you’re going to have to work on days like today, when your readers will be counting on you to tell the story."
 
With his words in mind when I got home, I did what came naturally.  I wrote.   Through tears of sadness, shock, anger and confusion, I wrote.  When I finished writing, I cried some more and I didn’t stop for a week.
 
One of the things I wrote that day was my reaction to the whole ordeal.  I went back and read it just now, and the funny thing is, the words I used to describe my reaction then and the words I used above in recalling it five years later are incredibly similar, right down to the order that they appear on the page.
 
Five years—and my words and thoughts are basically unchanged.
 
Does that mean I haven’t learned much in five years?
 
On the contrary, I believe I’ve learned quite a bit.
 
I’ve learned that it’s possible to get too comfortable under the blanket of security that being born and raised in this country affords us. I’ve learned that that comfort can also make us too passive and indifferent toward the way that security is provided. I’ve learned that even in the shadow of this country’s greatest tragedy, there is no limit to some people’s greed, intolerance and hatred.
 
I’ve learned that five years is not long enough to make the tears stop.
 
<span style=”font-size: small”>But I’ve also learned that being born and raised in this country affords us a security that people of Iraq and Afghanistan can only dream of. I’ve learned that something like this can inspire some who are normally passive and indifferent to act. I’ve learned that in the shadow of this country’s greatest tragedy, there is no limit to some people’s generosity, acceptance, and love.
 
Over five years, I’ve learned that the people of this country have been determined to become stronger as a result of what happened five years ago yesterday. We’re still working our way back and we have a long way to go, but the important thing is that we have refused to fold.
 
We have not forgotten—and at the same time we have refused to remain swallowed up in the sadness and chaos of 9-11-2001.
 
That, more than anything, is something to be proud of.