9/11, what it meant to me - and what could have been

[The Straight Story]

I remember that day, my daughter was only 5 months old at the time and the wife was home alone when it all happened.

There was something important though I sometimes forgot, because it was not just a realization it was a feeling.

Whoever brought on these attacks sought to terrorize people, they hoped to bring us down, shake us up, etc.

What they did do though, for but a moment, was pull us together as a people and help us realize how petty some things we were doing to one another truly were. So much time spent fighting with one another over every from gay marriage to how to fund a local street repair on a political level, and bickering about so many little things on a personal level.

For a moment we stopped and the nation became, for most of us anyways, a big tent.

The enemy was not each other, we weren't worried about how we were going to dress that night when friends came over, we didn't care about a lot of small things.

For a moment we grasped the big picture. We put aside our differences to help one another, like we should have been doing more of all along.

And then it got ruined.

WE became the potential terrorists, we started to fear each other, look at each other with suspicion. No fly lists, listening in on phone calls, reading emails, and the list goes on.

We turned a terrible event into something positive with a lot of potential for growth, and our government turned it into what the terrorists wanted all along - something to terrorize us and make us afraid.

A nation came together for a moment in time, but instead of focusing on what we could do to become a better nation from it, a better people helping each other out, it was turned into a witch hunt.

People we never knew before we hugged in the street, talked to at the store, and we didn't give a whit about their personal life, religious beliefs, etc.

What could have been had we used that as a spring board towards real compassion to our fellow citizens.

We finally came together with empathy and love for one another, we didn't let it hurt us we let it makes us stronger as a people.

And it was all erased by fear peddled by our own elected officials.

We won that day. We the people overcame.

It took our government to turn it all into a loss.

[The Straight Story]

1. kicking for the night crew (nt)

[KitchenWitch]

2. Happy to be your first rec!

:hug:

We really did come together. And the world was behind us. All of that has been squandered away by the Bush misAdministration.