September 11th, 2006

The thing that hits me on September 11th is that we Americans have the luxury of focusing on "September 11th." We'll ask ourselves, our relatives and co-workers if we feel safer or not 5 years after the Wake-Up Call. We seem to seldom stop and appreciate the fact that mile-high plumes of toxic dust are not more common in our metro-skylines.

What date do you think they'll pick in Iraq or Afghanistan or Lebanon or Israel? Is there one day to reflect on decades/centuries of mass distruction? The loss of countless mosques? Temples? Churches? Schools? Media centers? Pivotal infrastructure? Homes? Lives? What date have the Kashmiris designated to reflect on the result of hatred? The Sudanese? The Irish? The Chechnyans?

12/21/88, 9/11/01, 3/11/04, 7/7/05... Americans, Spaniards, Brits & Scots remember these dates because we can. Because fortunately we don't have many to choose from. Why is that? Because the terrorists choose not to hit us yet or because our governments don't let them? I don't know... and if you're reading my blog, chances are you don't either. But I do know I have nothing to do with our anti-terror successes or failures. I was just lucky enough to be born in a country that needs to dig back more than a week to list five incidents of mass-causality within 2,000 miles of my brand-new adobe condominium.

"...this kind of life makes that violence unthinkable..."

Now I'm all for asking our government to try protecting us. If it doesn't... why have government at all? But I fear Americans expect too much protection in this itty, bitty world of ours. Politicians are afraid to admit vulnerability... and who can blame them? The public is too afraid to hear it. (A vicious cycle, greased by the one renewable energy source this country uses regularly: Fear). And so we wrap ourselves in a caccoon of fear, saying over and over that this War On Terror can be won and evil be no more... spoken like a real 230-year-old country, if you ask me.

If the idea of worldwide extremism bothers you, here's your options, as I see them:
a) Join an Intelligence Agency
b) Leave protection to those who have, and just live each day like you'd be proud to make it your last
c) Sit at home worrying about something you know little about and have no control over
d) Kill yourself, start over. Play the odds that any parallel universe possesses less hate than this one

a) has tempted me in the past. But I'll stick with b). At least for now.
And I'll stop for a second today and reflect on how lucky I am to live where I do, when I do. If my timing had been different, I could have died in Tower One, or the Oklahoma City Federal Building, or Baghdad, Beirut, above Lockerbie, in Saigon, East Berlin, or a host of other hate-filled time-spaces. But I didn't... so I better not waste my lucky oxygen.

I try to think about that for a few seconds EVERYday.
After all, September 11th, 2006 is just another day.