Of Truth and Terror

I haven't been able to sleep until well past midnight the past two nights. Last night I got home from the Sox game and turned on the TV to quiet the thoughts racing around my head and hopefully lull me into a half-coma so I could eventually drift to sleep. This backfired (as it usually does) when I found myself drawn into a Sept 11th documentary on The Learning Channel. Two hours (3am) later I am knee deep in tears, had been awake for almost 24 straight hours, and found myself at a complete loss. Being that it was 3am, I eventually fell asleep, but I woke up today with that same heavy feeling - the same heavy feeling I get every year around this time.

Sept 11th means different things to different people. My experience is unique and important to me only, with crossover occurring only in the few moments where I shared the events of the day in the company of select others. I was in NY state, safely several hundred miles away from the city, but no matter where you were on the planet, that day was completely surreal. I am fascinated, if not morbidly so, by the stories of those who were actually there - of whom a friend from high school was one - of the deeply personal tales of tragedy and triumph that came out of that day. For the first time in hundreds of years, we had war in our own backyard, in the heart of where we call home. War came to us, not us to them and there was a distinct difference.

It is incredibly perverse to me that we, as a people who "belong" to a country, will speak with great horror and sadness of the tragedy (for it can be nothing else) of close to 3,000 innocent lives taken in those few hours that perfect fall morning, yet, in the same breath, chalk up the loss of Iraqi civilian lives as "part of the process" of war. Things are very different when it is so close to home...

But, as we all know, Sept 11th and Iraq have nothing to do with one another, and I only bring it up here as a passing thought that just ran through my head. Today I will go to my favorite place on earth and do the only thing I can think to do - give blood to the American Red Cross. I remember feeling, as idealistic late-teen and twenty-somethings, completely helpless. Given our professional rescuer training, most of the trainers at my college wanted to arrange a delegation and help with the search and rescue. In the end, we were discouraged from doing so because the offerings for help had become so overwhelming that NYC rescue services couldn't coordinate everyone and were having a harder time with the operation than if they just did it themselves. But the people I knew, we all did what we did because it was who we were - we were training for a profession where our entire existence was to help out in a crisis. Athlete gets injured, call in the trainer. To stand by and do nothing was not in our DNA.

Now Sept 11th is a day of reflection for me. It is a day (or often several days) where I evaluate and re-evaluate my life, my values, my beliefs. What have I done this year to help someone else? How do I feel about the world at-large and my country's place in it? Am I doing my part to be a force for peace and understanding in the world? Am I educating myself enough to be not just tolerant, but accepting? Am I intolerant of the things that need to be changed, and have I done anything to change them? Who, and what, is important to me? What about my co-worker, my family, my friend, my neighbor - what's important to them and can I help? It's almost as if, as the only way I know to honor those people who so unassumingly had their lives taken from them, I use this day as a personal reminder to never become complacent.

I haven't forgotten what that day and the weeks that followed felt like - and I don't need a bumper sticker to remind me. We are, simply, in a war of ideas where the casualties are far too many and too real. In a highly globalized world, I am no Patriot and have never been a flag-waving "proud American" - I mostly just felt like a human being who happened to be lucky enough to be born in a country that offers me a vast amount of opportunity, however imperfect it may be. It was extremely disheartening to know that, no matter what I thought of Islam and al-Qaida, had I been in those buildings I would have been killed as indiscriminantly as the next person just for being an American. I have a hard time wrapping my head around something like that, around that kind of hatred and extremism and senseless judgement. It puts someone like me in a precarious position - how do you not muddy the simultaneous truths of wanting the persons responsible for such an act brought to justice, but yet not judge the ideas that brought about this plan? Who am I to judge ones religious beliefs, but what do I do when those beliefs mean death to non-believers just for not believing? Obviously, in my point of view, islamic extremism (meaning jihad and senseless, grandiose acts of violence) is just that - extreme - but these people have a different point of view. How did they come to that view? What caused this sort of extremism? What made 19 men board 4 planes to kill themselves and 3,000 others? Why did they not only think this was okay, but honorable?

I don't have the answers. I don't think anyone does - or, more accurately, there are so many answers out there that knowing which one is right is not possible - and maybe there is no right answer. This posting is disjointed, I know, but its fragmentation is a literal reflection of how I feel about this whole experience in the first place. Because I am one person, and I can't rebuild the towers or make those people alive again or single-handedly change the course of history, I am doing the one thing I can do. I'm using today as a reminder to look outside myself, because you never know - you just never know. Does that mean I quit my job and join the Peace Corp? No. Does it mean I commit myself to a lifetime of permanent public servitude? No. I have learned over time that there is no shame in pursuing your own happiness (though trying not to have it at the expense of others is certainly preferable), as there are others better-suited for the roles I mentioned and many others I did not. But it is my job to remain an active citizen, to look outside my walls from time to time and keep my eyes open for the opportunity to help when I can, and to take that opportunity when it comes. I need to educate when able, learn when able, do when able. In that, I become not just one, but one of many - and that is when a true difference is made.

Here in Boston, tomorrow will be another beautiful, cool, sunny September day. This time, we hope, no tragedies - and maybe, instead, some small victories of sorts.