The Mirror

We all know what day it is, so we can skip the unnecessary preface. Alright, so I watched the streaming feed of both CNN and Fox News for their coverage of today five years ago. Why? You ask. Most of you know I refuse to watch anything having to do with September 11th (documentaries, Flight 93, World Trade Center, etc.) yet I watched the actual coverage today. All of those aforementioned pieces and those that weren’t all profited the network or producers for those that watch and in most of them the emotion was just acted – it could seem that it was real, but at the end of the day, Nicholas Cage et al. were just doing their job. Aaron Brown didn’t expect he would be covering the World Trade Center exploding and collapsing in front of his eyes when he went into work on the 11th. The emotion in the reporters’ voices at 9 AM was raw and it was real, there’s no denying that. When one journalist at Fox reported that her colleague, Barbara Olson, was on one of the planes, your hands trembled along with her voice.

Anyways, on to the main subject of this post; it is what I have basically been thinking about all day. Coincidentally enough, 9/11 occurred at a time where a great deal of change was already going on in my life. Barely 10 days into high school, I was still immersed in the adjustment process of doing no schoolwork to doing a little. So there I was, in Kurt Simonsen’s class at 9 AM that Tuesday morning when the television came on and our freshmen class had to grow up real fast.

9/11 is undoubtedly the single most important event we’ve collectively experienced, and since its been five years, it serves as a perfect benchmark for self-reflection. I know most anyone reading this is pretty close to my age and can relate, so here are a few questions – some having to do with 9/11, some not – that you can ponder while you are actually doing real work (being in college now and all)…

Remember when you first got word of what happened that morning. What was the first thought to run through your head? Who did you know that could’ve been in harms way? Now imagine if the attacks happened right now. How different is the list of people you would worry about? When you saw family & friends for the first time - think about that experience.

Think about the last five years now. Try and piece together the blurred lines where one memory ends and the others begin. Give names to all the joyful and painful moments. Hug those you love and once loved, honor those you lost. Give meaning to the times that didn’t seem to make sense back when they happened. Think about how many people have come and gone into your life in the past five years. Even better, think about those who have been fixtures in during that time. Dig up old photos and laugh at all the ridiculous faces.

Forget everything else in the world around you. Forget the wars, the conspiracies and the politics. It is thrown in all of our faces daily and what better time for a break than now. Listen to the songs you used to listen to back then. You know, the oldies but goodies like Limp Bizkit – remember them? MTV was also cool five years ago, if I’m not mistaken. There was no iPod, Apple was a dying company and what the hell was MySpace? Yeah times have changed.

Of course thinking about all this will lead down other paths and don’t be afraid to take them. Take as long as you want too. In today’s world we barely have any time to pause and digest everything that’s going on. People go crazy when they aren’t allowed to – trust me I know. The last five years were some of the most important in shaping us into who we are. Whether directly or indirectly, 9/11 had some impact in that shaping.

Thank you for reading this. I mostly wrote it for myself but felt I should share it for anyone who wanted to read this.

So sit back, reflect for a while; take a breath, and then moving along. I’ll see you in another five years, who knows where we will all be…