The box on the calendar marking today looks like any other. A plain rectangle that, for the words “Patriot Day,” bears no special characters. Yet for the resonance of 9/11, that box has all the dimensionality of three objects that reflect three different ways in which we can engage with the memory of a day we’ve said that we’ll “never forget.”
The day, of course, is September 11, 2001. The day when al-Qaida attacked the United States in the homeland, killing nearly 3,000 people. Thousands more were killed as a consequence of the toxins and wars that those attacks unleashed.
First, the borders delineating today take on the look of a window. It’s a window that we clean perhaps once a year, a small chore we accept in order to more clearly look out on the landscape of a collective trauma.
We can plant ourselves on the windowsill, assume some contemplative countenance and look back on the terror of that day from the comfort of the present. We can look back and see planes carrying passengers slicing through buildings where people were working from the safe remove of 24 years, of an entire generation. We can look back on the terrible chaos of that day and remember, perhaps, the terrible inevitability of gravity weighing on those who stepped through the shattered windows of the Twin Towers for lack of an alternative way down.
Second, that box on the calendar can take on the outline of a door. It’s a door in our memory that those intrepid enough among us can unlock and walk through. We can allow ourselves to cross the threshold of memory and engage with the tragedy in a way that just might lead to healing. Walking through that door, we go from passive to active, from observer to participant and, in so doing, can demonstrate to others the continued importance of actively remembering this national trauma if we are to more completely heal from it.
And you needn’t walk far. Remnants from the jagged rubble of 9/11 sit like a single-exhibit, open-air museum in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
Third, that box on the calendar also has the look of a mirror about it — and this may be the toughest transformation of all for us to face. Because 9/11 happened for reasons beyond our individual ability to prevent or control, why should we challenge ourselves to the scrutiny of introspection about it?
What we could and did control, of course, was what we did on 9/12 and on all the days and weeks and months and years that followed. This is as true at an individual level as it is at a national one — and all the layers in between.
Looking in that mirror, we can reflect on the actions we took as individuals in the immediate and extended aftermath of 9/11 and think about their impact on the person looking back at us in the mirror. We can reflect on our personal efforts to comfort others when we ourselves needed comfort. We can think about our personal efforts to serve others when our fellow citizens went overseas to serve us.
Furthermore, and at a more fundamental level, we think about whether we have lived our lives in such a way that induces or reduces hate. Put another way, we can think about whether we have lived our lives since 9/11 in such a way that contributes to or hinders our individual and collective understanding of others.
It’s not about trying to rationalize why terrorists attacked us 24 years ago or thinking that everything we’ve done is justified for lack of another 9/11 happening on our soil. Rather, it’s about allowing ourselves to overcome the immediacy of anger and revenge that so readily morphs into oversimplification and pernicious stereotype. It’s about separating out those who wish us harm from those who don’t, rather than grouping everyone who looks a certain way or speaks a certain language or practices a certain faith into some homogeneous mass of terror. It’s about honoring those whose lives were taken in how we live our lives as Americans who believe in the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all men and women.
So clean off that window, throw open that door, look intently in that mirror to do your part in making sure we properly remember what we told ourselves we would never forget. Maybe, just maybe, reflecting on this collective memory can help with a collective healing that the passage of time can provide.
David Peduto writes from Annapolis.
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