The Day that Defined Us

Sunday marked ten years since the morning that changed the face of our nation forever. The events that occurred on September 11, 2001 and the decade that has followed has shaped who we are as a people. It has defined my generation.

Like everyone else, I have my story of the moment I was told what happened. My mother walked into my room to wake me up for school and told me that a plan had hit one of the World Trade towers. What? Ok, Mom, I thought, I need five more minutes to sleep.

Before I got to school, I didn't understand the weight and significance of what has happening. I thought it was an accident--surely it couldn't have been on purpose. Who would do such a thing? And to America? I thought everyone loved America? At 14 years old and growing up in a suburb of Salem, OR, I didn't have a concept of the global landscape. Once I got to school, all we did was watch the news that day. I saw teachers and administrators crying, stunned, jarred by what they saw happening on the television screen. Slowly, I realized that what I was living. What we were experiencing would be the material my children studied in their American history class. These attacks were the most horrific thing to happen to our country in my lifetime. You know how our parents all know exactly where they were and what they were doing when they learned that President Kennedy had been shot? It's the same...my kids will ask me where I was.

It's important to understand that for my generation, September 11, 2001 was the  first taste of how complex the world is. We grew up in a time of economic boom, jobs were aplenty, and going to college meant that you could get a great job and prosper and live the American Dream we hear so much about. We grew up in a world where the United States was at peace, where war was an antiquated thing of the past that our parents lived through, but not us.

The decade following 2001 has been rocky. There's been economic crisis, global and social upheaval, and political turmoil. Words like "terrorist" have become dirty ones, and our airports will never, ever be the same.

But above the pain, tradegy, and war, I hope we remain optimistic as individuals and as a nation. I hope we continue to remember the way we came together in a time of need. How people would all of a sudden let others cut in front of them on a highway, or stop to say hello to a neighbor they usually ignore. The wounds of 9/11 have not yet healed, and some of them never will...but we are closer than we were yesterday.

I will invoke our Presidents of today and in the past when I say, may God bless the United States of America.