(Content warning: if you are sensitive to 9/11 memories, you might want to skip this post)
I remember where I was on 9/11
I remember seeing the headline flash by before the news site crashed and thinking it couldn’t be real
I remember how close New York felt even though I was on the other side of the country in Seattle
I remember everyone fearing the attacks weren’t done. Would the next one be on the East coast again? California? Seattle?
I remember how everyone came together . . . . unless you were Muslim or brown. . .
I remember being told how much “they” hate “us”
And I remember how we met that hate with violence
I remember sitting in my grandma’s kitchen watching the first bombs dropped on Iraq
I remember hearing the rhetoric that our government spewed, claiming it was to “protect our freedom”
And I remember thinking that there had to be a better way, somewhere, somehow
What if we met that hate with compassion instead of violence?
What if we built schools instead of bombing them?
What if instead of funding genocide, we stood up for the oppressed and told their tormentors “no more, it stops now”
What if we learned to recognize that the color of someone’s skin doesn’t define who they are, their actions do?
What if we recognized that our religion is personal, and different beliefs can be honored without turning into hate and violence?
Twenty five years after that day, when we saw both the worst and the best of humanity, it’s terribly sad that our society, our country, was not able to build on the best of humanity, but chose to build off the worst instead.