Another September 11. What to do with it?
Already 10:15 in the morning and I realize that this should be a day of introspection. A day of deliberately ignoring those who have hurt us and looking in at ourselves. This thing happened 14 years ago today, and it changed us. We know we will not be the same again. And when it happened, once we could believe it happened, we knew that. Instantly everything was different. But I, for one, did not stop to think, What am I going to let this do to me? What will we be in 14 years because of this?
Now I see, however, that I am not the same, and you are not the same, our country is not the same and the world is not the same. There is a progression here. Working backwards, I see plainly that the world is not the same, because America is not the same. And America is not the same because you and I are not the same.
The change started with us. Admit it. OK, Osama ben Laden did something, and we responded. The significant thing was the response. Rene Girard would say so, if I understand Girard. The great anthropologist and philosopher found that the most ancient societies had a prohibition against imitating what others did. The forbidden thing was not to frown at one’s neighbor. It happened. The forbidden thing was to frown back. Jesus saw things the same way. He never said, Don’t slap your brother. He said, If your brother slaps you, turn the other cheek. A hard, hard saying. When I am slapped, I am stunned, stung, insulted and defensive.
So…we were slapped hard, and we were stunned, stung, insulted and defensive. And we acted the way human beings naturally act. Our response, mine and yours, was mostly emotion; it moved up and out in a groundswell of anger, and then those we call leaders made decisions. They were leaders in the sense that they could see where we were going and get in front. They raised a banner and we became the followers. Moved by our grief and anger and insult and fear and finally hatred we went out looking for our enemy, striking at least in his direction. The Middle East. Those Arabs.
Now we must look honestly at the results of that.
Where has it taken us?
What did we win? What did we lose?
How is the Middle East better now? How is it worse?
How many friends have we made? How many enemies?
What wrongs have we set right in the world? What damage have we caused?
What have we done that we are proud of? Of what are we ashamed?
What mistakes did we make? What have we learned from these mistakes?
I come to these questions mostly unprepared, so obsessed I am today with cleaning off my desk and monitoring the forest fire down the road and across the freeway. I have so much need for the world to be orderly so I can think, and then it never is. I have to learn to think with one cheek stinging and smoke in the air. “Count to ten,” my Daddy said. Because at that moment the world will change in one direction or another.
We need now a moment of introspection, since we did not take it in 2001. Now, nearly noon September 11, 2015, we have to ask all those tiresome questions. Tomorrow begins in a few hours, and the world will start to become whatever we make it.