The 9/11 Post
If you want to skip my rambling and go straight to the video at the end you have my leave to do so.
A little over 5 years has passed and I thought it worthwhile to reflect on the most mis-appropriated event of our generation. Some call it the defining moment but that’s open to debate. The initial aftermath brought down boundaries and exposed the true nature and strength of character of many people but it has since been used to justify unspeakable injustices.
The challenge of living in a post 9/11 world has not been met by the US in my opinion. The challenge is for civilization to rise above the knee-jerk reaction and while nations such as Canada and the UK have done tremendously in maintaining their strength of character the US has slipped into an abyss of racism, fear, and abuse. Katrina, a second term for Bush, Iraq, NSA wiretaps, Gitmo, the list goes on.
Getting back to the actual event, everyone asks where you were when it happened and the fact is I slept through the biggest event of the decade. As an honours student in PoliSci many friends and family alike turned to me to put it in perspective. When it happened I was asleep. The phone rang and it was my ex saying someone had tried to attack the US.
“Tried?” I said. “Call me back when they succeed, I’m sleeping” and I hung up. My mom came into my room a few minutes later talking about someone crashing a plane in the states. “People don’t generally crash planes, the planes tend to crash themselves. Let me know if they, I don’t know, crash into something interesting, otherwise I’m sleeping” I said and my mom closed the door.
A few minutes later the door opened and the phone rang again. I ignored the phone, turning the ringer off. “What’s the World Trade Centre?” asked my mom.
“It’s in New York, big building of international commerce” I mumbled from my pillow “I’m sleeping“.
“I think they hit it with a plane” she said.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I mumbled “you probably misunderstood or they got it wrong, check CNN, I’m sleeping”
“But I’m watching CNN” she replied.
“Well it was probably an accident. Let me know if the building falls or something important is hit, I’m sleeping” and buried my head in my pillows.
“Is the Pentagon important?”
“I’m up!” instantly awake I grabbed my map of the Pentagon (don’t ask) and ran to the living room.
A couple hours later I was getting ready to leave for school. “Are you sure you should go?” my mom asked.
“So long as transit is running and the school is open then I’m going. If not I’ll be back. Don’t you see? This is the first test,” I wasn’t talking about school but rather thinking of something Joseph Sisko once said, “and I’ll be damned if I’ll let this change the way I live my life”
“But what if something else happens? What if we’re at war?” she asked.
“I’ve got my cell phone so you can reach me if anything happens but I’ll tell you what, help me find that old Walkman with the radio and some batteries and I’ll take it with me, that way I’ll know as soon as possible what happens next”
As we searched for that old Walkman I knew that one day I’d tell the story and something told me it would be the JFK Assassination of my time.
Everything was switched over to CNN. Every channel, every radio station. It was hours before you could get any Canadian perspective and a solid day and a half before you could get any local news, even traffic reports.
I remember riding a full skytrain, no one was talking and everyone had a radio. I switched my Walkman off to save batteries when I realized a train full of earbuds all on the same station was loud enough to hear clearly. I made eye contact with every person on that train. I didn’t see fear in a single pair of eyes, even the shock had begun to wear off, but rather I could tell every one of them saw the importance in making an effort to understand what happened in more than emotional terms. A grim determination to understand and not let it change their lives, for knowledge and intellect trump fear every time. It made me proud to be with them out in the world that day, and proud to be Canadian, for not one person I saw on the streets that day looked afraid.
Years later when the London Underground was attacked I thought back to that moment and wished I could have stood shoulder to shoulder with my English brethren riding the tube the very next day as I knew they would. And when I visited Churchill’s underground museum months before the underground attacks I remember a picture I saw of a boarded up store front during the World War II London bombings that read “the only things dropping faster than German bombs are our prices!” capitalism run amuck or grim determination and strength in the face of chaos and fear? I leave it to you to decide.
At school all I had that day was a graduate-level honours seminar. We abandoned the topic the outline called for and instead discussed the events. Within 15 minutes the biggest guy in the room, a football player, broke down into hysterics, sobbing uncontrollably and yelling “we’re all gonna die! It’s world war 3!” and he was an educated man, physically strong, and not prone to outbursts.
We all tried to calm him down and explain the reality of the situation to him. I took out my Walkman and another student used it to monitor CNN to make sure we were all kept up-to-date. The panicking guy calmed down and we academically discussed the events. At one point someone turned to the professor and asked “do we get out early today?”
He replied, “what do you think this is, the Stanley Cup playoffs? Let’s keep this in perspective here.” The professor was a rabid Canucks fan and class always got out early on game night, but not that day. Something about that made me proud. Reminded me of Churchill when asked about cutting funding for the arts during wartime saying “my god man, what do you think we’re fighting FOR?”
For me 9/11 was about rationality and intelligence rising above the fear. It was about my stiff-upper-lip English heritage. It was about not jumping to conclusions, not letting others tell you how to live and defending what you believe in and who you are from the vulgarities and poor decisions born of fear. It was about not letting fear change you.
I’d like to encourage each and every person who reads this to view the following clip on youtube and remember, 9/11 was not about whatever Osama Bin Laden or George Bush tell you it was about for they both wish to use the event as a tool to convince you of something. Decide for yourself what it means to you. For me it was a test of character. Do you let it change you into a fearful, hateful, prejudicial person or does it make you feel closer to your fellow man and make your petty differences seem unimportant? Can it be a fire from which a better social consciousness is forged or a tool to oppress, control, and frighten? I say we choose for ourselves, as we always have.
October 29th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
i loved that jon stewart video, thanks for pointing to it. unfortunately, they’ve taken it off youtube. which is too bad, because i blogged about it, too.
hey, i also wanted to tag you - here: http://www.moritherapy.org/article/art-that-makes-a-difference/