Like that other 9/11, I’m teaching today.
Like that other 9/11, the sky is perfectly blue.
Like that other 9/11, I was happy to get up and have a class to teach. Life was good, then and now.
But the world is different. Our lives changed, our culture changed. Our hearts changed. There is more fear. And because of that, more anger.
I used to look at the broken window in my house and remember how lucky I was to have survived.
One of many memorials for those who died on 9/11/01. This one is in Springfield, Mass.
My whole family survived when so many did not. Not all of my clients or students were as lucky. It took me a long time to be able to ride the Metro again. Overcoming fear is a small price to pay when you can still walk and see and hug the ones you love. Now we have to overcome a bigger fear. Fear of trusting again. Fear of accepting someone different from us. Fear of a religion we don’t understand. We each have choices to make, today, thirteen years after September 11, 2001. Make them in love. Make them with an open heart. It’s all you can do, but it will change the world.
—-Quinn McDonald lived just three miles from the Pentagon in 2001. Now she lives 2,500 miles west of it, but she still sees fear and suspicion and anger.
QuinnCreative 
Thank you, Quinn. This is a very insightful and loving tribute to a brutal day. May we all grow in love and tolerance, and still not accept evil, wherever it is.
Amen.
Well said Quinn. The ripples of fear and distrust reached out all over the world and it is our ignorance that holds us in one place. While religious zealots of any strip are worthy of our scepticsm, we need to at least open our minds to make a pathway for bruised hearts to follow.
“A pathway for bruised hearts to follow.” Lovely image.
I wrote a post on Facebook last night you might like to read, concerning a friend.
I’ll have to go look for it.
I was living in Manhattan on that day – felt the shudder when the planes hit the World Trade Center, smelled the smoke and ashes in lower Manhattan that lingered for so long, saw all the fliers on every street corner for weeks after, posted by families searching for loved ones that would never be found. I lost my job in the months after the attack, because every company in Manhattan was in an economic crisis and started doing everything in-house, and had to leave New York. There are so many reasons to remember this day with a sense of great loss, for SO many of us. And yes, Quinn, it still always surprises me.
I’m so sorry you lost your job; it was a heartbreaking time. You must be haunted by so many memories. I still won’t watch anything about that day.
thank you for writing this. I was not directly affected – I lost no one I knew nor were any people I knew injured or had lost people, but like everyone else I know I was affected by the horror, the collective sorrow, and the impact our policies have had on everyone. And the fear. I’m very familiar with Islam and know that what happened that day was a perversion of its core beliefs – it’s unfortunate that, as often is the case, the acts of a few cause harm to the majority.
Yes, that’s exactly how it works.