I know this is a little more of a somber post and probably not what a lot of people want to think about now, by the time this post is published, that the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11 has passed. I know this, but, a friend and I were just discussing the idea of how the events of 9/11 have shaped young people as Americans and as a generation and it got pretty interesting. I thought I might share some of it on the interwebs and voila, a blog post was born.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about when I say 9/11...I have zero things to say to you. You are on the internet, go and look it up. Trust me, there is a plethora of information at your disposal.
I was almost five years old when the world changed forever and the United States realized that we had an enemy that fought with terror, wore no uniforms, respected no borders, and followed no rules of war. I remember snippets of it - mostly not understanding what was going on and why my mom was crying. There was no moment for me when I understood that my life had changed forever, that the world was now fundamentally different. I'm told that things were especially chaotic in DC (for obvious reasons) and that for the capital city, the apocalypse had come.
Our generation is in a unique position in the world - where some of us remember the events of that day and some of us don't, but regardless of how much five or six year olds remember, we were born into a world of established rules and we grew up in a world of fear. We grew up in a world where it was perfectly normal for security to make you take off your shoes at airports and getting the troops out of Iraq was a common thing to see on the news. We grew up in a world that was different in so many ways to the world our parents had known and while some of us might have been alive for the event that changed everything, many of us don't remember it. Our lives are different and our country is different - and our generation is entirely different.
There are so many depressing aftershocks of 9/11 (I mean, the wars...) but I think that one of the most depressing is that now, all this terror and fear, massive security at airports and suicide bombers, it's how we've been raised. We can always hope for a more peaceful, more understanding world, but this is the one we've been given. This is the one we've been raised in and, as a generation, I believe it has made us trust the government less and accept that the United States has an enemy that it's struggling to fight. We've grown up with a moment of silence on this day by default - and while so many understand the gravity of the event, I feel that so few people actually think about what it meant to wake up into a new world or to raise kids into this new world. Or what it meant to be kids in this new world.
However, my friend claims that due to research, our generation shows a greater capacity to want to help, to volunteer, and to be involved in political issues and I don't know if that's a direct result of the events of 9/11 and our perhaps specialized upbringing because of it, but that seems interesting to me. Because of the fear maybe we have been raised with the idea that to get things done, we have to mobilize together, because if we stick together, we can try to change the world.
Sorry to end on a cheesy note with that, or to attempt to handle a heavy topic that is hard to talk about, but it was on my mind and, hey, what's the point of running a blog if you can't randomly post whatever's on your mind. I hope you all enjoyed the weekend and, again, I'm sorry to post this when the anniversary of 9/11 has already passed, but I hope it's made you think.
At least that's not illegal yet!
Have a Brettastic day!
(Image Credit: s45.photobucket.com & http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/American_flag.jpg)