A Moment of Gratitude
The day will come for all of us.
Every morning I lift myself out of bed, grumbling as I fill my travel mug with coffee and swing into my truck, the thoughts of the day to come and the challenges that will make it feel longer than it ought to filling my head. As I drive through the neighborhood I see the same play being rehearsed as cars pull from houses still asleep and children still lost in dreams. But the world won’t wait for me to kiss my little ones one more time. For all the time I spent chasing the woman I love, we never expected that life would pass so fast we couldn’t catch up.
That’s why the irony of hurrying out the door to sit motionless on the freeway grates on me now. All of my life I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and no matter who I am, or how much I mean to those around me, today might be the day I wished I had stayed home to spend just one more minute with eyes that know me, or the little hands that hold me. Every one of us know stories of those taken before their time. Of lives let behind in shock. But those stories fade in our memories as the price of life forces our attention to those things in the here and now.
That was until September 11, 2001. I remember that morning like it was yesterday. A friend called me as I dressed for work. “Turn on the news.” was all he said. The building stood stoic even as acrid smoke billowed out. ‘All those people’ I thought to myself. When the second plane made its slow turn toward the second tower and slammed into the side of it, I jumped from my chair in outrage - it all came to me then, and it mattered little why, because who was the more important question - “who could slaughter innocents like this?” Days later I would hear the government tell me they were terrorists bent on revenge for American influence in the Middle East. Days after that, with the building still smoldering, came the lectures from professors and callous opportunists blaming America for the evil deeds of others - that because of our arrogance and our capitalism, we have brought death upon us. What to do? Apologize. Withdraw from the world, accept that America is a country birthed in exploitation and now bleeding as it should for all of the darkness it has spread in freedom’s name. With the wounds still deep from the elections only months before, political unity was short lived, and almost a year later we stormed into Iraq after pleading with the UN to stand tough against those that traded in terrorism. Before 9/11 we were willing to give countries the benefit of the doubt. No longer, we said, but still so many that cried with us on that fateful day now turned and walked away when we asked for support.
What did that day in September teach me? It taught me that the world is far smaller than I thought. That oceans and air craft carriers and the world’s greatest technology cannot protect us. It taught me that our government is largely incompetent and willfully ignorant when it comes to protecting our borders and enforcing our immigration laws. It taught me that our FBI and our CIA worry more about turf battles than battling those who declared war on America decades earlier. It taught me that our State Department sees strength in capitulation and weakness in standing up for the ideals that made this country thrive. Most importantly, from that day to this, I’ve watched many Americans who cried with me that day forget the pain and death inflicted on us by men insane with a religious lust that paid them with black eyed whores for the lives they took. The enemy today, for too many Americans, is George Bush. It’s Dick Cheney. It’s Donald Rumsfield. It’s the battle joined even though the enemy has declared war on us countless times. It’s Israel, a thin slice of land bordered by countries that raise children eager to murder. It’s our soldiers, slandered as beasts who murder in cold blood, terrorizing women and children, like Nazis. It’s General Patraeus, a man who has dedicated his life to his country only to be dismissed as a traitor. For all the flags that flew in the months that followed that atrocity in New York, so few fly now. Why? Are we afraid of being called patriotic? Jingoistic? Warmongers?
The nearly three thousand who died on September 11, 2001 would all rather be called those names that what they are called today instead - victims of terrorism. No one got up that morning, raced to their cars and onto airplanes knowing that their day had come. If they any inkling, maybe they might have held that little hand one more time, or kissed the ones they loved for a moment longer. But they are gone now, and we are here, remembering them and for a moment longer, treasuring the time we have left in this world.
That is the way to honor those who died that day - not a moment of silence, but a moment of gratitude for those around us that make our lives lovable.
