It has been 17 years...there are high school seniors who were not born or at least who were babies when the planes crashed. It is the defining moment for a gereation...I mean literally THE MOMENT. When researchers were looking at where to cut off the Millennial generation from GenZ they decided on 1996 as the cut off because that was the youngest they felt people would have been really impacted by the terror attacks.
Seth asked me this morning if they had to keep learning about 9/11...kinda like we talked about it in school last year and the year before and the year before...do we have to keep talking about it? I tried to explain that for those of us who remember the planes crashing it was so impacting that we can't help but talk about it.
I can see that it will fade from our collective memory the same way the attack on Pearl Harbor has...
In some ways I think that is ok...I mean I think maybe we should not just focus on the horror of that day...
I heard yesterday the survivors of 9/11 are trying to transform the day from just a day of remembrance to a day of service in honor of those who died. Really I think that is a beautiful thing to do...and if we can hand that "service in honor" to the next generation not just "let's talk about this awful thing and be sad. I think is the right way to go. Because what I want to remember about that day is the first responders who rushed in, and how the passengers of Flight 93 gave their lives to protect our Captial, how we all just sat at work on watched tv and went to lunch as a whole office just to be together, of the guy who stood on an overpass above the 210 and just held our flag for the passing cars to see...the unity we felt as country and the pride we shared with each other, that is what I want to remember and pass on.
