Saturday, September 11, 2010

Where Were You?

Today has been a tough day to get through, not because of any family crisis or neighborhood uproar, but for the simple fact that it is 9/11.  I remember so clearly not even thinking we were being attacked when the first plane was said to have hit the first tower and later seeing and hearing the horror unfold.  So many conversations that I had that day run through my head today, nine years later.......should we go and get our kids out of school or are they safer there, were friends living in NYC safe and had anyone heard from them,  are we sure the plane in PA was truly part of the atack, who was behind the massacre and simply "Why?"  For a while we came together as a nation.  It didn't matter the color of your skin the person you had chosen to love or the way you punched a ballot, we all hurt and we needed each other to get through this.  People flew flags and hugged one another tighter, said, "I love you" more frequently and mourned with the greatest of sympathy those we had lost.  Unfortunately that did not last; actions that were taken with the best of intentions were scoffed at, fingers were pointed and even rumblings of an inside job were circulated amoung the people.  It all seemed as if the anger we felt at those who had caused the real harm was being directed in the wrong place.

Today nine years later my heart still hurts, not as much about the events that unfolded this particular day, that pain has lessened, but the ache comes from the fact that we as Americans have turned our backs on what made this country great long ago.  We as a people have become banal and complacent, we don't hold the values that our founding fathers had originally put forth to create the United States of America.  We stumble over the word God because it might offend someone and we have taken Him out of everything that Franklin, Adams, Jefferson and the others who originated what we were to become had placed Him in.  We tolerate things simply because "We are supposed to be free."(there's freedom and then there is being a doormat).  And we give in too easily because doing the right thing is sometimes hard.

I personally would like to be as brave and as dedicated to America as those who hijacked the hijackers on Flight 93.  They did not roll over and let those men, who had distorted their religion and ideals, murder more people than those who were on that plane.  They took matters into their own hands and they brought the aircraft down in a field in Pennsylvania not on the White House or another DC target.  It's time that we did not let these people die in vain and in doing right we do not let those who died in NYC and the Pentagon simply become a distant memory.  I say it's time to do the right thing so.............."Let's Roll!"