Today is a beautiful September day. Brilliant sunlight in a cool, blue-sky morning. Just like the morning of September 11 2001, when the world changed.
This year seemed harder. The twenty-fifth anniversary seems arbitrary but my feeds were filled with archived news reports, family stories, survivor stories, news just released about what many knew immediately: that air, that dust was bad for you.
So maybe it was the tiny blip of reminders, refreshing what lies under the surface. Maybe it was the awareness of just how much of what we’re dealing with today stems from that moment. Maybe it was the blatant lies spouted by the current resident of the white house that made it harder.
We still gather to remember, still remember in the little moments of the day. How today is like that day that was so different from other days. A day we remember in fine detail: where we were, what we were doing, who we were with, what we had planned, what happened to those plans.
We remember the day and the people we knew and those we didn’t, who died due to hate and anger.
It’s 25 years later and we don’t have that before life of never imagining such a thing could happen. We can only work towards a world that won’t do it again. We can only remember their names.
There’s more that we could never imagine happening going on, and this year’s September 11 remembrances may seem to be fading in a world that seems more and more violent and dystopic. But violence is never the answer. We must remain committed to our belief that freedom can be held by many, even though they don’t always agree on everything. We can agree enough. And we can agree and disagree peacefully.
As I do every year, I pause to remember the day, the two I knew, the thousands I didn’t, and all of us left behind in a different world.
REMEMBER
