Do you remember where you were when the world changed?

Or do you even realize it did?
Ten years ago, I was having trouble sleeping for a few reasons.  Physically, I couldn't lay on my sides due to a fresh tattoo on my right arm and a less-than-a-week old piercing in my left ear.  Mentally, I was already in mourning for it had been exactly one year since my dad had passed away.  So when my godsister shouted up the stairs that I should turn on the news at that early hour, I was already kind of awake.  At first glance, it looked like a Jerry Bruckheimer film.  When the reality set in, I forgot all about the pains in my body and the grief relaxed its grip on my mind so it could try to comprehend what I saw: The World Trade Center in New York resembling smoke stacks after planes slammed into it.  They kept replaying the shot of the second plane slamming into the tower over and over for people "just joining the broadcast".  I sat there not knowing what to do for a while before deciding to go and tell my sister.  I had to take a bus for about a half hour to get to her place.  On the bus ride, a few people were talking about it, but mostly it was quiet.  By the time I got to my sister's and woke her & her boyfriend up to let me in, one tower had already fell.  I sat in my sister's living room and watched the second one fall.  I had already planned on seeing my sister that day so we could be together on the year anniversary of our father's death; all plans, however, fell by the wayside as myself, my sister, her boyfriend, their roommate, and a few other friends gathered together at a coffee shop not too far from my sister's place.  I remember distinctly sitting there outside and all the sound being muted.  Even the cars going over the road were quiet.  It was as if the whole world had been somewhat muted.  I remember thinking in that moment "at least I'm not alone in my grief today."  It was a bit of a selfish thought, but the sense of feeling muted had hit me a year prior to this and feeling it again so massively was, in all the madness, a small source of comfort.  Four days later, I moved away from my only home and Portland for college.

The decade since has brought change.  My sister's boyfriend is now her husband.  Both her and I have attended and finished college.  I had a full relationship from beginning to end in that time span.  My godsister and her then-boyfriend-now-husband have a kid of there own as well as successful businesses that barely existed ten years ago.  I, of course, have also found out about the woman I am; a notion that was barely there back then.  I'm not going into all the ways the world has changed because everyone else already has and I don't feel the need to add anything more to such commentary.  In short, a lot has changed in ten years and that one event a decade ago set the tone for a lot of those changes.

So here we all are in the now.  Remembering a tragedy that, at one point, was the reason-cum-excuse for a lot of just plain bullshit.  Remembering the event that caused us to not quite feel safe since.  Remembering those who did not survive.  Remembering the day and where we were then.  Remembering to never forget.

I agree we should not let those who died then and those who've died since go forgotten.  I also think we should allow the dead to rest and the living move on as a people.  The men responsible have been neutralized in one way or another.  The conditions for breeding such a hatred have been at least addressed if not fixed in some respects.  We've learned through the chaotic paranoia what actually works when it comes to preventing such an event from re-occurring (such as having leaders who'll act on warnings when they come in).  We've learned that the world is more complex than us and them.  

If we take any more lessons from all of this, let it be that hate may have its days but love always wins out.  Let it be that no one internal group can ever defeat a united humanity.  Let it be a yearning for understanding between foes before it is too late, like it was when my father died with words unspoken between us.

"Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one"