Stop dwelling on the past. Remember it and move forward

I'm an avid follower of the news according to NPR. This week, they've been spending a lot of time focusing on the events of September 11, 2001. One of the points that struck me the most is the amount of time that has passed since it happened and the amount of other things that happened since then. Has it really sunk in that it was almost 10 years ago since that event/chain of events? I was about to turn 13. Sitting in my social studies class next to my friend Stephen Lorance...

[this is the part where you reminisce about where you were when you got the news and start mourning and all that stuff]

I know my perspective seems a bit insensitive, but wait til the end so you can tell what perspective I'm coming from.


Since the day that changed how America sees the Middle East, a vast many things have changed. There was the great flood of the south that evacuated/destroyed a greater portion of the Gulf Coast.

This is where the previously mentioned perspective comes in.

During my all-too-brief stay in New Orleans, I had the opportunity to work with children grades K-5/6. This was in 2008. Since then, I realized that the majority of the children I had the blessing of working with didn't remember/know what it was like to walk into an airport 30 minutes before your flight leaves and run at full speed through the checkpoints and into your seat, but very vividly remember having to watch their very own families get swept away by Mother Earth.

[There are some who honestly have no idea how they feel and can only guess]

I'm not belittling those that suffered because of the attack. I see the struggle of those who saw their family off to work that morning and never saw them again. Those who lost family, friends, lovers. Those who now worry about the next terrorist attack. I'm simply assuming the perspective of those who were forced to face the death of everyone around them and the loss of everything they had ever known (churches, schools, homes, parks, restaurants).

Face it. 9/11 has gone the way of The Cold War, the Kennedys, WWII, the Great Depression and all of the major changes that can be remembered by anyone alive today that (though they do have lasting effects) don't make a logical difference in my life because I have no memory of what life was like before then.

My travel life has changed. I know the difference between flying/driving in 1999 and 2002. Also, I've seen the abandoned Six Flags over Louisiana and entire parts of the city where nothing but foundations stood and you can still smell the rotting organic waste washing in from the Lake and the Gulf. That being said, I also have family that barely missed the Irene not too long ago and my main media source was damaged and is still recovering in Japan. [Yeah, the planet is pretty much thinning the herd starting with the places that aren't constantly at war]

Let's take a few more steps towards where we are today. Children that are being born today will not truly understand the changes that they are being born into. They'll know that America had it's first black president and the conspiracy theorists among them will know that he is mixed. The vast majority will be a few steps farther away from the racism that I know [don't tell me that I don't know racism. Though my family wasn't hung from a tree, I've still been discriminated against plenty of times]

No, the world won't be made of rainbows and butterflies, but just like the first generation born into integration, this will be a generation that will take all of the problems that are being faced today and work even more vigilantly towards a globalized culture. You think it's cool that you can Facetime with your friends and family? Try and picture the technology depicted in Farenheit 451... but better. See international monorails. Basically take everything you know about technology and communication and throw it away. That kid with a smartphone will be the least of your worries. I'll be the guy saying, "When I was a kid...[cassettes, cell phones, pagers, manual transmission, buttons, etc,]!"

I can't wait to see what the future holds.

HAHA! I did it again. I really am moving from point A to point Somewhere Else...