Thoughts from an American's Heart

It would be hard to find a more shared commonality in all of human history than the collective poor night's sleep the entire world got the night of September 11, 2001. That of course being not even near the list of things that just weren’t right on that day. Facts and realities to horrid to continue repeating are now common knowledge and forever a part of so many people's lives. Also, because of those same terrifying realities, so many people's lives are no more.

Never has it been nor will it ever be anything but the worst kind of tragedy when innocent people are slaughtered because a message needed to be shouted louder, or a punishment carried out further. When all other options are exhausted there are times when it is unavoidable, but aside from those times, it is hard to live with the burden of justifying such actions. There must be a better way for us to share this Earth.

Not a person in this great country is here for any reason aside from a love for it, or a beacon of hope emanating from it. That fact is universal whether you were born here, brought here, or fought to get yourself here. The pride that comes with calling the United States of America your home is no different for those who's history here extends back generations in the past than those who have just arrived and come only with hopes for generations in the future. No corner of the world, no corner of history, is without a link to this country. Because of that we are brimming with a rich and diverse culture all our own, yet are a welcome home to every culture that can find it's way here.

All the brothers and sisters of this nation enjoy a cherished freedom to hold close our own beliefs, our own ideals. There are times when we share ours, there are times when we learn others’, and there are those awful times when we have lost sight. Yes, we have fought amongst ourselves in the past and on too many occasions it was not pretty. Alas, fighting is what brothers and sisters do, and inevitably it only strengthens the bonds between them, the bonds we all share.

I dare to presume that the terrible pain of recent events, felt uniquely yet commonly around the world, can bring about one good thing: we are united. The world is ready and waiting to go forward into the promising future of the human race, and is hoping to do it together. Again I dare to presume that no peace loving person with knowledge of these tragic events is without a degree of sorrow, a slight twinge of fear. This fear is not the kind induced by the intimidation of others, but rather results from an absence of hope that actions like this speak of. A world without hope is a fearful place. If people around the world cannot unite for the common good and further progression of one another, it is a bleak future into which we all stumble.

Let us hope that those people and nations interested in peace and justice, in those things which are good and fruitful, will not need any such signal ever again to point out the evil in the world. History repeats itself and the past is always with us, but the future is unwritten. The revolutionary and tumultuous times of the 20th century came to a rather quiet yet still uneasy end, and now let there be no doubt any longer that the generation carrying us into this new millennium, my generation, still has some work to do.

Looking back on where we've been and what horrors we have all shared in, let us each in our own unique ways hope, wish, or pray, but most importantly work, for a future in which the most severe shocks we'll ever feel, the most startling surprises we'll ever encounter, are brought on by our constant underestimates of just what we are collectively capable of creating, and never again of what some are independently capable of destroying.

-An American