Thursday; September 11

        When I was a child, I would read about the attack on Pearl Harbor and the ensuing World War and think about how far away and distant that seemed to be.  That date that lives in infamy and those events that followed shaped my growing up years and influenced my worldview.  Even without a memory of it, December 7, 1941, changed my life. 

As I look at today’s date, my thoughts immediately go back to where I was on September 11, 2001.  It still seems like yesterday that I was shocked by what was happening.  That day has influenced not only my life but our national and international relations for the last two decades.  The other day as I got to thinking about it, I realized that a growing number of our young people don’t remember that day.  Many of the people in our armed forces and emergency services were not alive when the towers and the planes came down and, even those who were, may be too young to remember the impact it had on us.   To them, 9/11 is as much “history” as December 7 was to many of us.

There will be a lot of people remembering September 11 in a variety of ways today.  (Interestingly, I plan to be flying home out of a northeastern airport today – something that would have been hard to reconcile not many years back.)  I encourage those of us who remember the day to share some of our reflections of the day with those who don’t remember it – but here is the caveat – rather than focusing only on the atrocity of the day, I encourage you to remind them of the kindness and humanity that was shown in the days, weeks and months after the attack.  Strangers stood in the street and cried together.  People gathered up supplies to help the cities impacted by devastation.  First responders and the military were honored for the public service.  The tragedy of these events represents some of the darkest days in recent history – but in the midst of it, there was goodness, kindness and hope.  Let’s choose to remember that today.

          Think About It!