How 9/11 Changed Me
Fairfax, Virginia—On September 11th, 2001, I was 20 miles south of the Pentagon in Fairfax, VA in my hotel room. I had just flown in from Santiago, Chile where I had been working for about a year. My main source of daily news at the time – The Today Show was on TV. Just as I was about to head in to the office, the news took a turn. Katie Couric had just received word of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I sat down to listen, and was soon glued to the TV as the news continued to unfold. I wept.
Using Yahoo Messenger, I pinged friends and family back home in Massachusetts to see if they had heard the news. After the second tower fell, I pinged my colleague, Nico, in the Santiago, Chile office.
“The twin towers are gone.”
“Gone? Las torres gemelas [twin towers]? What do you mean gone?”
“I mean they are GONE.”
He could not get his head around what I was saying.
Just before lunch, I emailed my friends in the Fairfax office to see what was up. They had heard the news but only on the radio, so they came over to my hotel room, and together, we watched TV for an hour or so. Dumbfounded and overwhelmed, we decided to take a break from the news to grab lunch and process what had happened. Or try to, anyway.
Needless to say, I never made it in to the office that day.
Two decades later, I am south of Fairfax in Williamsburg, Virginia visiting my parents. I want to say it’s hard to believe that 9/11/01 was that long ago. It’s not that it feels like yesterday. But 20 years later, as a still frequent air traveler, I am reminded all the time of 9/11/01 and how our world was surely changed forever as a result of that horrific day.
“Please remove your shoes…”
Without fail, I flashback to news of the “shoe bomber” caught onboard a plane trying to do harm just three months after 9/11. Another moment of crazy in a series of crazy events that followed 9/11 including anthrax-laden letters and duct tape hoarding to protect ourselves from the threat of a large-scale chemical or biological weapons attack.
My head spins just thinking back on all of that.
Coming into this 20-year milestone, this is what we’re collectively doing—reflecting, remembering, and sharing our stories about that tragic day and its after-effects. How the United States changed. How the world changed. How I changed, rather, woke up—in a couple of notable ways.
First, 9/11 got me paying attention to national politics (I was mostly checked out prior to that day). To follow along, I got hooked on NPR for information, diverse perspectives, and news (and no longer watched The Today Show).
Second, 9/11 sparked “My Why”. But it took me many more years to see that. Here’s what happened.
As someone who grew up overseas, the hatred that followed 9/11 ailed me. I loathed the hate and the broad brushing of all Muslims as evil. It made me yearn to share with the world that I had lived in the Middle East as a kid and traveled the world. And that despite the differences in our clothing, language, and rituals, what I saw were simply, human beings. Human beings, being human. But how—how could I spread the word to dispel the hate? Though an understandable reaction, we have the ability to choose how we react to events in our lives. Responding to hate with more hate deeply troubled me. I worried about the future.
Then we went to war in Iraq. And I loathed that too. Back living and working in New England, I went into protest mode. Not only did I march in the streets of Boston and New York City for the first time, I got passionate about putting a human face on the war. To help us remember that Iraq is a country full of human beings. Moms, dads, kids, sisters, brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins. You get the picture.
So, in my attempt to humanize the war, I brought a traveling photo exhibit to Boston called Faces of Iraq and built a team of people from the local Arab and Iraqi community to put on educational events that would complement the exhibit. For weeks, we celebrated the culture and people of Iraq with Bostonians. Over 1,000 people saw the exhibit. I can’t say how many minds and hearts were changed. But it was certainly beautiful, wonderful, and validating.
But as I reflect on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I again feel distraught. Because sadly, just as I worried two decades ago, the world is still full of hate. Perhaps more so, because the hate has divided what was once a united America in response to 9/11. And I find myself yearning once again to put a human face—on everything.
Then it hit me. That this was perhaps My Why all along. And it took 9/11 for me to first see it.
That my years growing up overseas and traveling the world had not just meaning. But also, purpose.
To help me see the humanity in all people, despite cultural differences, no matter where on the globe I might be. And to share my experiences, my worldview, with the hope of inspiring a more kind, compassionate, and humane world.
To this end, it’s no accident that I finally begin my blog at this historic milestone. Because it was the equally horrific and heart-wrenching end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan that spoke to me, as I furiously shared words and photos of the Afghan people from my 2011 visit to this war torn country on my social media.
It’s time.
How did 9/11 change you?
#1world1people
