Everybody seems to be thinking, and asking, that question today. “Where were you when the towers fell?” And so, because I’ve been thinking about it as well, I’ll share my story.
I was taking a ‘Teaching Elementary Mathematics’ course at my local community college. It was an early class, as well as an extended one, so we had a break halfway through. I went down to the student lounge to buy a diet coke, and the faculty and staff were all crowded around the TV, staring. I glanced over and casually asked, “What movie is that?” They stared at me. “It’s not a movie,” one of them replied. There was a moment of disbelief, and then the second plane flew into the tower. I was in shock. And, even though I don’t live anywhere near New York, I think it has taken me these five years to release that hardened shell of jaded cynicism to really feel and understand what that tragedy means to every (or at least the vast majority) of Americans.
I lost no family. I lost no friends. The death and destruction is not personal as it is for so many. And yet I grieve all the same. I grieve for the loss of that assurance that America is invulnerable. Even though the past has proven, more than once, we are not. I grieve for those men who believe that death, killing, destruction, is the only way to make their message heard. I grieve for the families who have lost so much. For the President, whose grief became anger. For children who will never know their mothers or fathers. For the men and women who jumped out of the 80th story window rather than burn to death. And, I grieve for the loss of a nation that had nothing to fear but fear itself. We have much to fear now. And hatred will never solve this puzzle. To meet hatred with hatred only exacerbates the problem. Meeting hatred with love…nobody that harbors such deep hatred can truly understand that sort of love. They have no energy for it.
