When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always."
— Mahatma Gandhi
In the past I have avoided all the 9/11 anniversary programs on television like the plague. It has always bothered me to see the events of that day played out on screen while an announcer with a voice full of gravitas tells me how I am supposed to feel. It has just bugged me, so I have chosen to avoid those things and just concentrate on my own thoughts and memories of that day. Well, when I am folding clothes by my lonesome down in the basement I always turn on the television to play in the background so that I have something to occupy my thoughts. Things get too crazy if I'm alone with my own thoughts for too long. Trust me. I usually just have it on MSNBC because I can listen along without having to be invested in some sort of program plot that would be in a regular TV show. Normally I do my laundry Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but this week I decided to go whole hog into organizing all of our financial information so that I can finally get our files in to our accountant so that he can complete last year's taxes for us. That put me a day behind, so I ended up doing laundry on Saturday. There is no way on earth that I would ever turn on MSNBC on Saturday because they fill their programming slots with shows about life in jail. Ugh! Who watches that garbage? But, anyway, yesterday they abandoned those horrendous shows to instead show a 9-11 show put together by Rachel Maddow and Richard Engel that looked interesting to me. My apologies to those ultra conservatives of my acquaintance, but I really love Rachel Maddow, so I was interested in her show.
It turns out that I just missed the last presentation of that show for the day, and instead MSNBC was showing a real time replay of the NBC coverage of the 9-11 attacks from ten years ago. I found myself watching despite my past avoidance of these shows. At first my mind took me back to where I was when I heard about the attacks. I think everyone who was old enough to remember that day does the same thing. I was in the car driving to an OB appointment in Rolla. I was pregnant with Katie at the time. I was listening to a local music station on the radio, and in the middle of a song the DJ interupted to say that he felt like we would want to hear what was going on. The station switched to a live feed from CNN that was describing the chaos. At that point the Pentagon had just been hit, so everyone was sure that there had been some sort of coordinated attack against our country. I was horrified at what I was hearing, but I couldn't really process everything. I remember showing up at the doctor's office and seeing everyone just going on about their daily business, having no idea what had just happened on the East coast. I didn't feel like I had enough info to say anything to anyone at the office, so I had my regular appointment and then came home so that I could watch the ongoing coverage all day, all night, all week.
Yesterday when I was folding laundry batch #1 the coverage was just at the very beginning. No one knew what was going on. Several thought it was still just a freak accident, but others were questioning if that could be true. At that point the Pentagon had not been hit, and only New York City airspace had been shut down. It was interesting to hear everyone postulate about what could or could not be happening when I know exactly what was happening and how it was going to affect our country for years to come. I sat and listened for about ten minutes, but then I had to turn it off. I was just feeling such overwhelming anger about the whole attack. I didn't want to hear all of the television announcers talking about trying to call the offices of companies located in the upper levels of the Twin Towers and hearing chaos and screaming. I didn't want to relive all of that. There was just too much emotion, and there was no real outlet for that. It is in moments like that where I am truly grateful that there is eternal judgment for all of us. Horrible violence against innocent people -- it was just hard to sit and rewatch it happen over and over. So I turned it off and came upstairs to regroup.
I should have just turned it to a college football game when I came back for folding Batch #2, but I was feeling too lazy to find the remote, so it was still on MSNBC. This time the Pentagon had been attacked, so they knew this was something horribly serious, but the towers had not collapsed yet. There was a reporter located about ten blocks away from the towers, and he was commenting on all of the fire fighters who were heading to help save people from the towers. As he spoke you could see large groups of fire fighters, maybe close to 200 of them, walking past him as they headed into the smoke and debris field. They looked amazingly brave, but what I knew that those reporters or fire fighters did not was that the towers were getting ready to collapse. I was horrified as I watched these brave men and women headed into a battle zone that was going to eventually take many of their lives. I wanted to scream into my television for those people to just turn around, but there was nothing I could do. It was such a complete and total feeling of powerlessness to change the past. I was done. I couldn't watch any more.
Since then I have been thinking a lot about how our country has changed in the ten years since that horrible day. I remembered how our entire country came together to rally our spirits in the aftermath of this tragedy. There were no liberals and conservatives in those early days. We were united as a country. I see the horrible political discourse today -- from both sides -- where we are so quick to label those who differ in opinion from us as evil or un-American, or whatever. Agreeing to cooperate with one another is seen as a weakness rather than a strength. We are quick to assign blame to others and slow to forgive and treat others with the respect we should show to one another. I wish that the unity of those first few months after the attacks could have continued -- not that we have to always agree with one another, but that we can respect each other for our differences.
I have my own feelings about what direction the country has headed in response to those attacks, but I won't waste a bunch of space here to debate it. I will say that I am so grateful to live in a community right next to Fort Leonard Wood. I have been blessed to see the amazing sacrifices that soldiers and their families are making for our country. Too few of us really see and understand just what sort of sacrifice is being made in our behalf. This morning when I woke up I got an email from goodreads.com with their quote of the day. It is the quote from Gandhi that I put at the beginning of this post. I just loved it so much! It is true. There are times when it seems as if evil is getting the upper hand, that horrible tyrants are winning the battle, and that hope is failing, but in the end good will prevail. I have absolute faith in that.
I was looking through a notebook I had used when I went to Timeout for Women a few years ago, and I found a statement from S. Michael Wilcox that I jotted down while listening to his amazing talk that day. As a side note -- S. Michael Wilcox is absolutely brilliant. I love listening to his words and thoughts each time I hear him. But anyway, the statement I wrote says, "Hope only can exist as we look forward." He was talking about the danger of becoming hopeless if we only focus on the mistakes of our past. Instead we have to look to the future and all of its possibilities. That's why I put the picture that I did at the beginning of this blog post. 9-11 is not just about the tragedy of that moment in time. It is about the resiliency of the American spirit. It is about reaching out to one another in times of need and finding the good around us. It is about rebuilding our country and ourselves better than before. I am grateful to be American today. We have endured and we have overcome the events of that day. The battle isn't over yet, but I have hope that we can unite together as a country to continue to grow and prosper into the future.
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