9/11

Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.
President George W. Bush, November 11, 2001

Eight years ago this morning, I was getting ready for work at a retail store downtown, waiting for my brother to wake up so he could drive me. It was the summer before I started college--I wasn't a happy camper. My job was menial and I sold overpriced "fashionable" clothes to little girls and their mothers with too much time on their hands. I was saving up to go to Davis, a school I never had any intention of going to. The morning was fairly typical, and I turned the TV on while waiting for Charles and CNN had a "Breaking News Story" playing. Airplanes had crashed into the Twin Towers...

Eight years has given me a lot of distance from that day... and a lot of perspective as well. Since that day we have occupied portions of Iraq, lost 4,343 men and women, and the Iraqi civilian casualty count is somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000. American forces have served in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq serving the American people...
I have spent the last eight years learning more about the world and what it means to be apart of it. I've learned more about what it means to be American: to have freedoms, to have democracy, to have the opportunities to shout back; to have a grocery store fight for our patronage, to have movie theatres liberate us of our mundane lives, to have a Starbucks on every corner. I was incredibly lucky to have been born American and incredibly privileged to have been born to my parents. For many reasons, I feel this way. But when I think about 9/11 I think about the children living in refugee camps in the Middle East sitting in UN tents wondering what life must be like for an American child who gets to go to school. I think about Iraqi children living in fear of the light in the middle of the night... and the American children who find solace because of their light in the middle of the night. It sounds selfish but it makes me realize how lucky I am to have been born in the US, or for that matter to a number of developed nations... I would have been lucky had I been born in France, UK, Canada. Any of those countries would have delivered to me similar freedoms as a child that I would not have had in Bangladesh, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. 9/11 reminds me how lucky I am...

I was incredibly lucky to have been born American and incredibly privileged to have been born to my parents. When I think of 9/11 I think of the terrified mother working in one of the Twin Towers and how lucky I am my mother still comes home to at the end of the day. I think of the sons and daughters who will never get to experience Prom, their first love, their first beer, their graduation because they died on a plane. Because men who had a different faith took power over their lives. I think of the widows who spent the next few years fighting and struggling to keep their lives together when all they want to do is quit. I could have been born to anyone and still have been lucky. But I could have been born into a different life as well, one that met tragedy. 9/11 reminds me how lucky I am...

This piece is not meant to be political or to be righteous. It doesn't even have to be about September 11, 2001. For so many reasons, I am lucky. For so many reasons, you are too. If you have the good luck to be able to read this blog, you are probably lucky for you could be in bedridden with a spinal condition or you could be living in poverty thinking "internet" is a myth you only hear about. We can complain about all the little inconveniences in our lives... but really we should all remember how lucky we are. Everyday reminds me how lucky I am.