Remembering 9/11/2001

I've asked myself several times what it is I should say and feel today. I could look on the media's sentimentality with distaste, or I could mourn the freedoms America has lost in the last five years, or I could mourn all those who lost their lives on 9/11 and those who have lost life and limb since in conflicts both justified and unjustified. But when I look back on that September day five years ago and I remember what I felt that day and in the days that followed, I do not simply remember fear. Yes, I was afraid--the U.S. border had closed behind my classmates and I on our field trip to Stratford, Ontario, and we didn't know what was going to happen or when we would see our families again. But overwhelmingly, what I felt that day and in the weeks afterwards was a sense of togetherness. Across America and around the world, people were united then. While my classmates and I gathered around televisions to hear the latest news, the Canadians around us offered us food and shelter while we couldn't get home. In New York City, firefighters and police officers and emergency workers showed a kind of courage I could barely imagine when they rushed to Ground Zero to help the survivors. It didn't matter what color you were or where you lived or what language you spoke or what God you worshipped that day. We just helped one another. It seems to me that, five years later, what we should do is not publicly mourn those we didn't know, nor should we simply mourn what it is that we have become since then in the name of so-called security. What we should do today is take a moment to celebrate what it is that we did that day, when we were a nation undivided by color, race, or religion and united in caring for our fellow human beings.