Forget 9/11

Forget 9/11

It is far past the time for us to drop the crutches, so to speak, of 9/11. 9/11 has been used to explain, excuse, cajole and defraud for long enough.

Sure, 9/11 was a rough day for the United States, to risk understatement. Americans died, foreigners died; brave men and women died with valor and I thank them profusely. But brave men and women also lived, and they carried on to help rebuild and to reformulate our national priorities.

Isn't it time to move on?

Here is a suggestion: Why don't we start invoking September 12th, 2001 as the day to celebrate, to elevate into a day to remember? 9/12 is the day we started to gather ourselves together. 9/12 is the day we started to evaluate, plan and take positive action to rebuild what was torn from us. 9/12 is the real beginning of a realization that we are not immune to evil doings.

We all need "peg dates" in our lives. There was "The Day of Infamy," and "Columbine," the day President Kennedy was shot, the day John Lennon was murdered, and, of course, "9/11." These were tragedies all and have become those days on which we all ask others, "Do you remember what you were doing when . . . ?"

On the other hand, we remember Lincoln's and Martin Luther King's birthdates rather than their death dates. We celebrate many positive aspects of our society and of our culture. More is accomplished by accentuating the positive than by reminding ourselves of death and destruction. Sure. It will always be there, if not only in our history books, but in the backs of our minds.

So far as recognition is concerned, so far as remembrance is concerned, let's consider emphasizing the positive that rose from the ashes of distasteful murder. Let's commemorate and emulate those who survived, who dealt with the tragedy that very next day even as the dust still settled and the smoke still permeated New York air.

Let us now elevate our collective national consciousness to embrace our coming together as a nation, if only briefly, and take that as proof that we are a people who can, if only briefly, forget class, skin color, religious proclivity and petty disagreements. Let us use 9/12 as a standard of such coming together as a goal to achieve this exalted state of national mind more and more often as we mature as a nation.

Forget 9/11. Let's celebrate 9/12.