Quotations That Helped Us Through 9-11
September 11th, 2006 by Laura Moncur in LinksIt has been five years since the September 11th attacks on American soil. So much has changed since then. When we were all hurt and suffering because of the loss of life, many of us collected quotations to ease our hearts’ grief. Here are a couple of those collections:
There are many compelling stories about 9/11, but this one really struck a chord for me. It is from a minister who lived in New York at the time of the attacks, but was moved to Michigan soon afterward:
He ministered to the people who were there and the people who weren’t. Of the two, he believes that those of us who watched the tragedy from afar struggled more.
“On hearing that I was in New York City on 9/11, people in Grand Rapids almost to a person say, ‘That must have been so hard.’ What I hear is their own fear and that curious thing called survivor’s guilt. I often reply to their sympathy by saying, ‘It was hard, yes, but I think you had it far worse. Our loss was palpable. Yours was all subjective, the stuff of dreams. You saw the tapes play over and over but did not see the kids in the playgrounds the next day or that we went back to work the day after that. You heard the dire predictions and gloomy analyses, but did not see that life pressed on. The Pile, as the workers called it, was not the whole city.’”
“I saw the contrast between the sunny weather, singing birds, and playing children, and the smoking rubble. Which was the foreground and which the background? Is the world a perilous place occasionally redeemed by shafts of sunlight and hope? Or is it a noble and beautiful place sometimes bruised by the consequences of chance?”
I believe that deep down at its core, our existence is based on pure joy. It is the darkness that creeps in that clouds this joy. Don’t let the darkness cloud your inner core of happiness today or any day.
September 11th, 2006 at 6:17 am
Am I a bad American for not mourning this day? Am I a bad person because I know that a lot of people died today, yet I don’t feel any different than I did yesterday. It is because I know that this event didn’t affect me directly? It could have, my uncle works in the Pentagon quite often, but he wasn’t there then, so why I do I try so hard to make it something that affects me deeply?
Why do so many people do that? I just saw recently, some other guy on some forum yelling that kids should have this day off. He says he lost 2 uncles and his aunt in the attacks, but is he right? Should we treat this day as a special one, even if nothing happened to us. I know today there is a memornial at school, by not being there, am I not a real american? I love America, it is my home after all. Yet still… I don’t feel the need to mourn a day that for me, didn’t show us being weak or in pain, but rather showed what we could do when we join together. The whole nation sat on the edge of their seat 5 years ago, and for a second, as those towers fell, I think we were really united. The outward cry afterwards was so great, it was incredible.
This nation is amazing when we unite, in one voice. I can’t help but feel kinda sad it takes something of this scale to make us care.
So if I go on today, do my homework, study, talk to that cute girl, and just live normally am I a bad person? What if I do all that, with the knowledge that if we all worked together, without a tragedy, we could solve the problems that hurt us so.
We need to live again, we cannot let ourselves get too wrapped up in things. We must remember, but never mourn. They would of wanted us to be happy, all of them.