A decade of my youth following 9/11

 

One month and six days after my 20th birthday, the US was deliberately and callously attacked by fanatics bent on this country's destruction. 9/11 has become the new Pearl Harbor. Like with Pearl Harbor, the JFK and MLK assassinations, the Challenger explosion, the fall of the Berlin wall, and Princess Diana's death, everyone who was old enough can remember where they were and how they felt on that day. I remember it took me a couple days before I felt comfortable enough to laugh with friends. Our whole world changed that day. I barely remember what life was like before the attacks. Before that day, I considered myself sheltered from many of the horrors of the world. That day, I lost  my sense of security in the country and the idea we'd always be safe. Most of all, I lost my innocence. 

Since then, I've spent my entire 20s looking at the world around me as it falls apart. Watching my friends as they are sent off to war then come back only to have their government turn their backs on them if they are physically or mentally injured. I've seen Wall Street bring not just our country, but the whole world to the brink of economic disaster. Our government is too busy being caught up in bipartisanship and in-fighting to do what is truly best for the citizens whose taxes pay their salaries. My youth is gone and I've cried more than my fair share in the past decade over my country's future. I have many happy memories from 2001-2011, but each one is tinged with the looming threat of yet another terrorist attack, the drama of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Recession. The Beat poet Allen Ginsberg once wrote how he saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness. I've seen the best minds of my generation handicapped by the reality of an uncertain future. Destroyed by cynicism and apathy, we find ourselves unable to move forward and make this country great as the generation before us tears down everything their parents built. Mostly, we are at a loss as to how to get us back to the way things were before September 11, 2001.

I've long wondered why human beings are unable to coexist peacefully without waging continuous war on each other. Is it an animalistic behavior over territory or are we an evil species that will not rest until we've annihilated the enemy? Greater men and women before us have long sought peace for our world. I don't think it's naive to hope for that. I yearn for the peace and stability in my world I got to enjoy in the years before 9/11. President John F. Kennedy once gave a speech in 1963 about repairing America's relationship with the Soviet Union and seeking peace for our world. The following excerpt from that speech is as poignant for me now as it was 48 years ago:"our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal...  This generation of Americans has already had enough - more than enough - of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on - not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace."