Memorial lights at the WTC site, 9/11/2007
Here’s an interesting essay, appearing in Forbes Magazine, which you might enjoy reading:
Moving On, But In A Different World
What 9/11 taught me about human nature
John McWhorterIn 2005 an old friend announced that he was getting married on Sept. 11. He and his fiancée had decided it was time to “move on.” It threw me a bit. I’m not always one for “moving on”–it’s part of why one writes books.
Yet as it turned out, I myself got married on Sept. 10 of the following year–which I would have considered inappropriate a few years before. I had to admit to myself that 9/11 was becoming, five years on, history, as much as I hated to admit that about the incinerating of 2,750-plus innocent people.
However, for me, letting go of 9/11 has been less a matter of forgetting than a gradual sense that what led to it was more a part of all of us than we are often aware.
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[Photo by Ann Althouse. Some rights reserved.]
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September:11:2009 - 10:45
I heard on Oprah that after a tragic event things change forever–and her motto is that things are not back to normal but rather “a new normal”. Your right, it is just a part of us now, and I have accepted it as part of my past. ( I was down at ground zero–one mile away when it happened. I was a baxket case on the first two anniversaries but I am o.k. now)
John, by the way Happy Belated Anniversary. ( Your wedding I mean)
September:11:2009 - 12:44
Interesting article and take on it…
I think expecting something like this to happen again here (in the USA) is F’d up!
I hope that attitude of expecting the worst and and expecting it to happen is not the sole thing that allows one to move on.
September:11:2009 - 14:16
Hmmm… I haven’t had an anniversary for nearly a year. Might you be confusing me with someone else?
September:11:2009 - 14:28
I was impressed with the relative lack of fuss this year, and with a headline suggesting part of the fuss in the past was the GWB need to stake his presidency on 9/11, a need Obama rejects.
Interesting article, which didn’t reflect much on the impact of American foreign policy on the reactions to and the fact of 9/11.
I agree with the idea of an evolution to a “new normal”, and it’s been harder to get there for the media overattention to the anniversary in the past.