September Towers

I was thinking about this earlier today, and I think my thoughts (as they often are) were a little... harsh.

Perhaps it's because every year at this time, the local campus and the College Republicans place tiny American flags on the lawn like some macabre, patriotic reminder.  I don't want us to forget the people who were important to us who were lost that day, when the towers fell.  I don't want us to treat the sacrifices that brave men and women made like that sacrifice was nothing.  They still feel the repercussions of their courage in their daily lives, hospital bills, health problems, and so many other things.  But what I do want us to forget is a mentality: the generalization that everyone of Islamic faith or Middle Easter decent is somehow complicit with those attacks and their underlying ideology.

It is unfair to assume that the beliefs of many line up with the actions of a few, but we're taught that actions speak louder than words, so maybe that's why we don't hear the frantic protests in the Middle East.  Life is complex, and the history of human actions is even more so.  I won't argue about who did what to whom as I'm not knowledgeable enough about history to carry any kind of debate with any sort of authority...

Perhaps... I wish we could band together like we did after it happened.  Unfortunately, I know the dark truth behind that wish is that people were held together by their sorrow and their hate.  While some may have been simply glad to be alive and to understand the joy of holding their loved ones hands, others could only look in horror as smoke poured out of buildings like clouds; physics stopped making sense.  Maybe that's why some chose to jump; they... thought they could fly, or that they would simply fall into the sky because, after all, the world had just been turned upside down.

I don't know anymore.  I want to say we should live like people are wonderful, and these attacks were freak accidents, but that's a happy state of denial by which I'm hesitant to abide because sometimes... sometimes people are what's wrong.  But they can also be what's right.  People are willing to help out to an amazing extent those whom they know, but the unknown causes doubt.  Fear, I suppose.  And some say we're governed solely by those two emotions.  No longer love and hate because those are far less dichotomous than we've been led to believe, but I don't know.

Life is rumored to be written here, and for me, right now, THIS is life.  Unsure.  Frail.  Apprehensive.  Yes, scared.  But looking for a way forward.  I don't know where I'll find the path, but I know there must be one to walk.  Today should be a day for giving thanks to those we love and honoring those, whom we may not know, who have served this country.  While I won't say that we should embrace the world with love or the like all the time (as I'm far too cautious to leave my heart, mind, soul (I suppose) so far exposed), I do think we should... I should... be willing to walk with the knowledge of my past in my stride.

I was thinking about this earlier today, and I... still don't have an answer, but I'm willing to walk 'till I find one worth keeping.