"Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?" is how the Alan Jackson song goes. I always remember vividly where I was when I first heard the news.
I was a Basic High School sophomore, chilling with my fellow marine biology classmates, 2nd period, waiting to start dissecting squids, when our teacher asked what seemed to be a pretty odd question:
"What does '9-1-1' mean to you?"
[Puzzled looks on our faces for a moment or two…] "Emergency," said one. "Urgent," said another. And those were the best answers we could come up with.
Our teacher, whom I remember being a kind and frank and red-headed lady, noticed that none of us had any idea what she was getting at, so she continued speaking her thoughts:
"Look at the clock. It's around 9:11am. Today is 9/11. And yes, 9-1-1 often means 'emergency.' Have you heard of what's been going on this morning back East?" I think none of us had heard; planet Earth had not yet entered the era of everyone having access to a world-wide-web-endowed smartphone. Social media wasn't a thing yet. Everyone didn't know everything about everyone else in everywhere, in every place, at every possible time. Our teacher was the only person in the room with a computer and with Internet; thus, she was the only person in the room with the back-East scoop.
She proceeded to explain to us a little bit about everything: the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, the Pennsylvania crash, the planes, the hijackers, the rubble, the smoke, the firefighters, the fatalities... She spent maybe 10 minutes talking about it with us, and then we continued forth with our squids.
I'm not sure I can speak for all my fellow marine bio classmates, but I, for one, didn't know how to digest what our teacher had just reported about the morning that was already being nationally termed as "9/11." It all sounded quite alarming, but to be able to wrap my head around it seemed a farfetched concept. For, in all my 15 years, I'd never known my country to be attacked, to be at war, or to go to war... That was something I had only read about in history textbooks. That was World Wars One and Two. That was Korea and Vietnam. That was the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. That was not now. Nowadays war didn't happen.
But things were different now. It took a while for my 15-year-old self to really internalize that things were different, and to this day I think I'm still trying to get used to the idea.
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| Two years ago, my youngest brother & I visited Sandy, Utah's 9/11 memorial, which honored the Utahns who were present at the attack sites. |
America and I observed Patriot Day for the twelfth time today. I daresay, on this 12th anniversary, my heart was touched more profoundly than on all previous anniversaries. I think it has something to do with something else besides 9/11 that my mind has lately been pondering over and over.
My mind has been revisiting something I heard a girl, who's roughly my age, say precisely a week ago. It went like this:
"We talk about the sanctity of life all the time. Usually when we say 'sanctity of life,' we regard either the birth or the death of a person. But a person's life is sanctified all the time, not just when they're a baby or an elderly person."
It was a fantastic comment. Life is a sacred experience no matter how old the person, whether afflicted or healthy.
A month ago, one of my coworkers and dearest friends (I feel like perhaps I have a lot of "dearest" friends :) got into a serious bicycle accident. He got pretty shattered up inside. God only knows how he survived. I'm pretty sure my whole office and I kept him (and his family) in our prayers constantly, from that initial moment we received word of his wreck. Miraculously he returned to work only one month later, for which God was to be thanked. I remember when he walked in wearing his usual suit and tie. He looked so good; I could hardly believe my eyes. His smile and cheerfulness were brighter than I had ever remembered them being. I could tell he had missed us, and the office.
If there ever was a Dutch oven that baked tangible miracles of angel-light countenances, my friend was one of those miracles. He walked back into our office, after being gone for so long, with a totally noticeable glow about him. It was when I saw that glow that I felt God's love so vibrantly in my every fiber. It was there in that office, very much so.
Sanctity of life: my mind zoomed right to it when I saw my friend for that first time after his bike accident. I realized that, if my nice car were to suddenly be dropped into a boiling, bubbling, burning volcano, it would be infinitely more meaningless than if I were to suddenly lose my friend.
I think this is a similar epiphany to the one Americans experienced on that first Patriot Day. They realized that it was their loved ones --- their people --- that mattered the most, more so than virtually anything else.
(Here's one last utterly random thing that popped into my head that I feel prompted to document...) Believe it or not, a few days ago I actually shared a stage and sang with the great, one, and only James Taylor. The last song on the program was "Shower the People You Love with Love." Terrific message that song delivers, and so pertinent with what I've been trying to say here in this blog post. Let's shower our people with love, for they are our treasures.
