Right?
The morning of September 11, 2001 was clear, quiet, and warm in Northern Illinois — the way most Americans remember it. The phone in my dorm room woke my roommate and I at about 8:30am CST. It was my roommate’s friend on the east coast, urging him to turn on the news. As I jumped down from the top bunk, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and put my glasses on, I stared perplexed at thick, black smoke pouring out of the Pentagon.
The newscaster narrating it had no idea what was happening, I was effectively listening to someone sort out a tragedy in real time. As the day went on, and the events became clearer, it was apparent that this day would come to serve as the dividing line in the life of everyone in my generation. Everything that came before it was prologue, and wading through the unfolding chapters would become our war — the one that Tyler Durden had told us a mere few years before that we did not have, but felt we needed.
I had just begun my Freshman year in college when four commercial airliners were used to bring down some of America’s most visible structures 15 years ago. I had spent my middle school and high school years becoming thoroughly liberal in my political worldview, and college was only going to cement that for me — I was sure of it.
The Aftermath: Anger and Fear
That October, I spent the bulk of my great uncle’s birthday party arguing with him that were we acting too quickly and too recklessly in bombing Afghanistan.
He disagreed, and insisted I get the f*@$k out of his house, to boot.
His take on the situation was much more quintessentially American. “Kill the sons of bitches!” he opined.
I reiterated that the “sons of bitches” were hidden amongst numerous other innocent wives, sons, and daughters that were not responsible for what had taken place in New York the previous month.
That detail was lost on him.
It continues to be lost on many of my fellow white Americans with whom I interface on a daily basis. To them, there really is some homogenous group of muslims, with some complexion in between white and black, and they all hate our values — free speech, fast food, guns, Jesus, reality TV, bikinis, driving, take your pick. They just hate us for those things, and we need to stop them from attacking us. My refrains seem to only stir up muck in their simple world — muck that they’d rather not mess with.
The Tempering: Years Gone By
15 years ago, I had harsh words for those who would suggest we both carpet-bomb overseas and close our borders. I was an 18 year-old with some strong white guilt manifested in a chip on my shoulder. Woe to the conservative who would step to me espousing the three Cs: Capitalism, Christianity, and Closed borders. To me, those folks were dead wrong, and because of that, they were assholes. Good riddance to ‘em.
These days, I have thankfully been tempered by the passage of time. I own property, I have a spouse and a child. I have people who I would kill and die for, and I pay taxes. But temperance has not resulted in a shift. I want my wife and child to be safe. I want my home to be my refuge. But I still cannot jump on the bandwagon of those clamoring for anything but peace and openness.
I often hear the phrase “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. I believe that view is overly simplistic. People do kill people, and guns make it easier to kill more people more quickly and more thoughtlessly. I wonder if the same holds true of religions: religions don’t kill people, they just provide a cloudy, esoteric justification to those who do. I include Christianity in that statement. Perhaps this is too dismissive, too sardonic, to cynical. I have seen beauty in religious practice, in faith, and in the community of ritual. I will never dismiss the potential for faith and worship to bring out the best of humanity, but I will also never dismiss the propensity for those things to bring out the worst in us, as well.
Our Curse as Humans
That is our curse as humans. We have all this fear and all this passion, and on so many occasions, we let it flow into the wrong actions. The group from Hamburg that used 4 planes as weapons had let that fear and passion flow into killing and destruction. My hope for the rest of us is that we don’t allow our fear and passion to flow into the same places. My hope is that we have learned how self-defeating that is, how detrimental to peace and prosperity that is.
To be clear, I am not saying that nothing should be done. I am not saying that we should find ISIS operatives and just hug them until they cry and apologize. What I am saying is that we should take some time to think about how we react to tragedies and attacks— all of us. Our words are more impactful than we often think, and our actions have impact much farther than we ever understand.
So whether our words and actions are viewed by tens or by millions, now is the perfect time to slow down and think them through. There is no merit in being the first to react to a tragedy. There is an infinite amount of merit in speaking and acting with extreme care.
For the vast majority of us in the world, the vision has always been peace; we have just been disagreeing with each other as to who is included in that vision. We are free to continue to shape this vision as we see fit — it is both exciting and utterly terrifying. But let us not allow that terror we feel inside to manifest on the outside.
The goal is still peace. Never forget.