Look Up
Posted by Christopher Smith
See, in the last few years, we’ve stumbled… and when you stumble a lot, you… you start looking at your feet. Well, we have to make people… lift their eyes back to the horizon, and see the line of ancestors behind us, saying, “Make my life have meaning.” And to our inheritors before us, saying, “Create the world we will live in.” I mean, we’re not just… holding jobs and having dinner. We are in the process of building the future.—John Sheridan, Babylon 5
It’s hard not to think about what happened five years ago today. Leave aside the horrific act of violence, the likes of which had never been seen before on US soil; the all-out political and media blitz makes it pretty much impossible to avoid confronting one of the more painful moments in the world’s recent history.
Surprisingly, remembering that day is difficult. Oh, I can remember a lot of the specific events of my day, but remembering how I felt is far more difficult. I honestly thought I felt much the same as I do now, and to a certain degree that is true. I still feel sorrow and anger when I think about that day, but it’s not the same kind of feeling. I didn’t realize this until I chanced upon a YouTube clip of Letterman’s interview with Dan Rather six days after the attacks.
These two men were candidly emoting the rawness of the moment, and it started coming back to me: both the feelings on the day of the attacks, and the emotional chain reaction that followed in the coming days, weeks and months.
September 11th, 2001 is often referred to as the “day that changed everything”, and several cynics have (correctly) pointed out that a lot of things didn’t change. The big change, I think, was at the psychic level. The psyche of the world, and the US in particular, was scarred that day, and from where I stand, I don’t think we’ve moved past it. But I think the time for that has come.
We’re going to hear a lot of speeches from a lot of people today. I am fearful that many of them will reflect where we are, rather than where we need to be. We stand as a nation and a world sharply divided, with the focus on the minutiae of day-to-day struggles for tactical advantage over one another. We need to be a nation and a world united and focused on a strategic vision to build the world our ancestors’ struggles demand and our inheritors deserve.
It would be nice if someone would rise up and seize that vision. I think the world is ready for it, that we have been ready for it for five years, but the horrors of that day have gotten the better of us. Rather than striding forward we’ve been stumbling, and I’m afraid the odds are against someone helping us find our stride again. I think we’re going to have to do it ourselves. Sometimes leaders inspire greatness, but I often feel humanity’s best moments come when greatness inspires leaders.
So I encourage everyone to seize the pathos of the day and harness its energies to the hope, courage and confidence needed to build the future we want to have. Let’s make our kids proud.