9/11

Wow. I seriously can’t believe it’s 9/11.

It’s the one day everyone says they are never going to forget, but it seems to me that this year, with the election cycle and the pandemic and baseball and basketball in full swing and football starting last night that the day has kind of slipped people’s mind.

Anyone else feel like that?

Next year, with the 20th anniversary, that will be a big deal. But how does one celebrate or even remember the 19th year?

I was 22 years old and had just started my second year of graduate school. I was a total baby. It was a Tuesday, and we had our first rehearsals for Arms and the Man, by George Bernard Shaw. The first line of the play is something to the effect of, “the war has started, isn’t it wonderful?”

It struck a different way that day.

Or course, the war in question in Arms and the Man lasted a matter of weeks, this thing we’ve been in has lasted almost two decades, so the similarities stop there.

It’s odd to think that my life has happened in the back drop of this war, this conflict. It’s even stranger to feel like it hasn’t had much impact on my day to day being. Perhaps nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps what happened nineteen years ago this morning did change the course of my life, yet I have never been able to see it. That’s a humbling thought.

Perhaps that is what I should never forget.

Anyone else feel like that?