feanix

OK, so ten years.

It's a big deal. The whole world changed. Everyone saw it. Everyone's attitudes to certain groups of people changed (for me it was right-wing fundamentalist nutjobs of all kinds) and everyone became suspicious of everyone else. Difference was seen as a total negative and an "us and them" mentality came into play the world over in one way or another. 

Oh, and air travel was made super, super irritating.

The night before this happened, Michael Jackson had his 30th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden. I stayed up and watched the whole thing, from beginning to end, and was rapt the whole way through. Totally enthralled. Then I woke up and that whole thing was pretty much wiped from my mind. It's an incredible contrast.

I remember that morning. 

We were getting ready for school and I went out to the lounge room and my mum was sitting on the couch staring at the TV. My brother had just dropped a bowl of cereal. I wasn't sure what I was looking at initially, just that I knew it wasn't a movie. They don't play those kinds of movies at that time of day. The first plane had just hit and my mother told me it was New York. I knew about the towers being the world's economic capital and I'd seen them standing on the horizon in a bajillion different movies. I remember my heart pounding in my chest and thinking, "What if that happens here?..." And then thinking that my country wouldn't stand a chance if it did. It still wouldn't.

Most vividly I remember seeing the dust and paper and debris spilling from the stricken building. I thought briefly about what a shitty job it would be to clean all of that. But then the thing that still stands out extraordinarily clearly happened...Something fell out of one of the windows above where the plane hit.

A body fell.

Then I realised that it wasn't a body. It was still a person. Someone had jumped. Then people started jumping. Rather than be burned alive or be crushed or whatever else was going to happen to them, they started jumping from the windows and dying on their own terms.

I had then, and still have now, a deep sense of respect for those people. To make a choice to do things your way when death is your only option.

I still feel the same way about any kind of fundamentalism. I think it's all wrong and all extremely dangerous. I still think George W. Bush handled it all terribly and that, in some way, he had no right to be surprised. Now, while I don't condone the actions of the people who hijacked those planes and did what they did, I too am not surprised that it happened. If your country had been forcibly invaded and then raped and pillaged of its resources without your people being compensated for it, over a rather lengthy period of time, you'd be pissed too. It was unreasonable not to expect some kind of reaction. The good, honest people of those oil-bearing Middle Eastern countries protested and asked and pleaded and begged for help, or to just have their homes back or just to be left alone and they got nothing. It’s just unfortunate that the people who took control (and stayed in control) are the ones who never should have had the opportunity.

But I won't be watching any of the specials that are on TV today. I won't be watching Kids of 9/11, or Heroes of 9/11 or any of that. I won't be watching any of the footage of the planes flying or the towers falling, and I won't sit and listen to the thousands of names be called out. I think to have to live through it over and over and over again is cruel. It’s cruel to the people who lost loved ones in the attack and it’s cruel to the rest of us who saw it happen. Our world changed that day, for the worst in some ways, and we don’t need to be reminded of the suspicion and the fear and the worry and the hurt. We don’t need to be reminded of how badly we acted en masse and we don’t need to be reminded of the people who decided to take thousands of peoples’ lives into their own hands and end them in one of the most horrific ways possible.

We need to keep it in our minds that we -- those with the economic power -- are not the only people in the world. We need to remind ourselves that all people, no matter race, gender or religion, need and deserve to be treated equally and with respect. We need to be thankful for the lives we have and the (mostly) Democratic states we live in where our politicians, more or less, will listen to us. 

More importantly, we need to keep in mind that there is no “us” and there is no “them”. There never was. Just people acting extremely in extreme situations.

Be nice to one another.