9/11, 25 years later

I wish that I had something profound to write about that day, but it hasn’t directly affected my life. I’m lucky, in that sense. I can re-watch Zero Dark Thirty and re-play Medal of Honor with the luxury of detachment.

I do have a vivid memory of that day, but it’s uneventful. I remember driving to class that afternoon and hearing a radio host mention ‘the tragedy in New York.’ I don’t know what I’d been doing all morning. After realizing there’s no classes, I leave campus and stop by a sports bar. I watch a TV broadcast while waiting for my takeout order. Tom Clancy gets interviewed, I think. Then I finally grasp the events.

The world has changed a lot in the 25 years since then. As tumultuous as the state of the world might (seem to) be now, it’s never been as wary and weary as it’d been in the wake of 9/11. There’s been the Great Recession, the COVID pandemic, and the Turkey-Syria earthquakes. They haven’t resulted from deliberate and malicious plotting, though. That aspect makes it the worst thing of the 21st century, in my view.

I don’t imagine something of this significance will happen again in my lifetime. That’s a good thing.