9/11

September 11, 2013

Passed my first 9/11 in a country that doesn’t care a whit about 9/11.
To be perfectly honest, I am so wrapped up in my own tensions and
fears that I forgot the significance of the date until late afternoon.
And I suppose, in the most technical sense, it wasn’t 9/11. In the US,
it was still the 10th, but it still felt strange to be the only person
for miles and miles who even noticed for a minute that this day was
even remotely different.

As a person with ambitions in international politics, I struggle with
how to remember 9/11 appropriately. On the one hand, I feel compelled
to remember how terrible that day was. I was just short of 11 years
old when it happened, and to this day I have a perfect mental picture
of the towers burning. This is the emotional side of remembrance, and
it is worthy of recognition. The political side of me, however, is
uncomfortable with this response. Every year I feel the need to look
up clips of news footage and watch it over and over. In my head I
rebuild the significance of the date, but it has been 12 years now.
The response to the attacks did not make us better as a nation. In
fact, I think our fear has caused us to cheapen what we hold dear. The
executive stretches the limits of its power every term,
anti-immigration sentiment is rife (although the tides may be shifting
again), we see threats everywhere, and we as a nation are so weary of
conflict that public sentiment can’t even be roused when a dictator
gasses children to death in their homes.

I want to remember, because this day has profoundly shaped who I am
and who I will become, but when does remembrance become a hindrance to
action in the present? When do the fears of the past become irrelevant
to our present battles? How do we balance letting go with memory?

These are questions I cannot answer, but it is cathartic to ask them anyway.