And Now For Something Completely Different
I didn't really think I would, but I've been watching a lot of the 9/11 programming today. I watched a lot of the commemoration and the opening of the memorial today on NBC and I watched this evening's 60 Minutes and the program that followed it, which contained documentary footage of a firestation near the World Trade Center. It had footage inside the towers after the planes hit. It was . . . totally surreal.
So, yeah, I wasn't sure I'd watch anything but I almost couldn't help myself. I react to 9/11 much like I react to anything Holocaust related . . . I just can't really deal with it. The toll is too high to really deal with, you know? And it's so hard to think about how awful humans can be to each other, even as we see examples, in the aftermath, of how wonderful they can be, too.
But I've been rather weepy all day and I hope it doesn't carry into tomorrow because I am doing a 9/11 activity with my sophomores that will include interpreting songs that were written as a response to that day that I hope will work into a discussion of music as a kind of living memorial.
I've been wondering, though, why I feel so . . . wounded by this day. Like, it feels at times like a hand is clutching my heart and squeezing it. And I didn't know anyone who was lost that day. I'm not even sure I know anyone who was even in New York that day. Even of the people I've met since. But aside from the obvious distress that a catastrophe this large would cause . . . Why is it so hard, ten years out, to deal with it, even without a personal connection?
I don't even really know. I think 9/11 is one of those bizarre things that was, by virtue of the nature of the attack, personal for every American, inside NYC, DC, and Pennsylvania and outside.
But even more than that . . . I don't know. I was thinking about this, about why even thinking about this day ten years ago constricts my breath. Because I was 15 when it happened (it was a Tuesday and we were in Madame Weltzer's Excel, not working on homework, when she turned on the television just in time to see the second plane hit) and 15 is old but it's still really young. So I know that I don't have a full understanding of exactly how 9/11 changed America and changed the world. I just know that it did. That the country I live in now is not the same place it was ten years and one day ago.
And I think, when it comes down to it, apart from mourning the nearly 3,000 who were killed directly that day (and the thousands that likely have lost or will lose their lives from that day in a more indirect way), I think I mourn for what this country could have been and what the world could have been had the attacks never happened. I think I mourn our potential to be something better than what we've become.
So, yeah. I can barely breathe when I think of how scary it must have been for the people on those planes who had to have known they weren't going to survive. Or the people inside the towers who happened to glance out their windows, sitting at their desk, and had no chance of even moving before their lives were taken. Or those who were trapped under all that rubble and debris and never got out alive. Or when I can't help but wonder where all those people are who were never found. But my heart constricts when I think about what our lives could have been in another time.
So, yeah, I wasn't sure I'd watch anything but I almost couldn't help myself. I react to 9/11 much like I react to anything Holocaust related . . . I just can't really deal with it. The toll is too high to really deal with, you know? And it's so hard to think about how awful humans can be to each other, even as we see examples, in the aftermath, of how wonderful they can be, too.
But I've been rather weepy all day and I hope it doesn't carry into tomorrow because I am doing a 9/11 activity with my sophomores that will include interpreting songs that were written as a response to that day that I hope will work into a discussion of music as a kind of living memorial.
I've been wondering, though, why I feel so . . . wounded by this day. Like, it feels at times like a hand is clutching my heart and squeezing it. And I didn't know anyone who was lost that day. I'm not even sure I know anyone who was even in New York that day. Even of the people I've met since. But aside from the obvious distress that a catastrophe this large would cause . . . Why is it so hard, ten years out, to deal with it, even without a personal connection?
I don't even really know. I think 9/11 is one of those bizarre things that was, by virtue of the nature of the attack, personal for every American, inside NYC, DC, and Pennsylvania and outside.
But even more than that . . . I don't know. I was thinking about this, about why even thinking about this day ten years ago constricts my breath. Because I was 15 when it happened (it was a Tuesday and we were in Madame Weltzer's Excel, not working on homework, when she turned on the television just in time to see the second plane hit) and 15 is old but it's still really young. So I know that I don't have a full understanding of exactly how 9/11 changed America and changed the world. I just know that it did. That the country I live in now is not the same place it was ten years and one day ago.
And I think, when it comes down to it, apart from mourning the nearly 3,000 who were killed directly that day (and the thousands that likely have lost or will lose their lives from that day in a more indirect way), I think I mourn for what this country could have been and what the world could have been had the attacks never happened. I think I mourn our potential to be something better than what we've become.
So, yeah. I can barely breathe when I think of how scary it must have been for the people on those planes who had to have known they weren't going to survive. Or the people inside the towers who happened to glance out their windows, sitting at their desk, and had no chance of even moving before their lives were taken. Or those who were trapped under all that rubble and debris and never got out alive. Or when I can't help but wonder where all those people are who were never found. But my heart constricts when I think about what our lives could have been in another time.