Lessons from America's "Darkest Day"

With all that I owned, I traversed the streets of Phoenix, AZ, making my way to the Greyhound bus station on America’s darkest day: September 11, 2001.  I was leaving Phoenix for reasons beyond my control.  Simply put, I needed to get home to Missouri (again), in order to get my head straight.

I wasn't paying attention.  Two times before reaching the bus station, someone said something about America being under attack.  If I’m honest with you…I figured they were talking about some political so-and-so going at some political point of interest.  I didn't care.  I was caught up in my own world, my own problems, and my own life.

Upon entering the Greyhound hub, I noticed all the TV’s were on the same channel.  It looked to be a news feed, but the images on the screen weren't real…planes were crashing into buildings in New York?  Ha!  Never gonna happen, folks.  Boy, how wrong I was that day.

The Hardest Lesson

An attack on America was the farthest thing, I think, from anybody’s mind up until the first plane struck the Trade Center buildings.  A complete surprise.  Weren't we…invulnerable?  Who would dare?  We were the WORLD police.  Our military was the best.  We had every possible attack angle covered.  No, we didn't trust our government, but they did protect us from all the other government and military boogeymen, right?

Well, we know the answer now.  We can be targeted.  We can be hurt.  We can have scars eleven years deep carved into our society.  That was America’s lesson.  The one we had forgotten after so many years of nigh perfect safety from foreigners. 

However, we breathed in deep and…

Beat the Chest

The screams still haunt New York’s collective mind, I’m sure, along with the shattering of glass, steel, and concrete on a sunny day.  At one point though, the noises did stop, and so did the tears…just long enough to come out of the shock and demand retribution.

Retribution…another term we had become unfamiliar with using.  Oh, I know, the movies revolve around the idea, but in reality, our real world?  It was too strong a term.  Revenge, yeah, we’d seen revenge.  Retribution being demanded on a countrywide scale?  Really, what else could President George Bush do but answer America's call?  Say what you will about the politics that followed into the war…there was no other decision.  Any other person in office would have done the exact same thing…or America would have seen them step down.

So we beat our chests, we beat our drums, we looked at maps to know precisely where our troops were going and we pinned tacks into Afghanistan.  We cursed turbans and robes and spit out Al Qaeda like a fluent curse word.  We sang war songs; we cheered our celebrities who whole-heartedly agreed with taking out aggression on the terrorists.  Then, as a Nation, we watched…

The Rockets’ Red Glare

Don’t deny it.  You know that infra-red glow coming off the TV screen as well as every other American.  We WATCHED those bombs go off.  Over, and over, and over, and over again.  Penance, RETRIBUTION, was ours…until finally…

Our Humanity Returns

As a nation, we tired of the bombs.  The death statistics weren't exciting anymore.  Our public enemy #1 still hadn't been captured, or killed.  We’d done our crying, our chest-beating, and public outcry.  We’d watched so many bombs we could almost name them on sight.  Our anger was subsided…not gone…but it was time to move on.

We started talking other things: sports, the weather, bad reality TV shows.  We started DOING things again.  Other things became important, over time…gay rights, how our own government was doing things- and how they should do things; we saw in people the best that we knew how to see.

Unfortunately, we also saw the evil in certain kinds of people…even if it wasn't there.  While intolerable, nothing is perfect, no one person or country is.  Never will be.  Because we aren't invulnerable, and we can be scarred.  America knows that, now; and we will…

NEVER FORGET

The sacrifice of our troops, our firefighters, the bravery of America as a whole for continuing to live an American life because we know, we KNOW… how important it is not to let any enemy force us to be anything but what we are.  That means accepting the good, the bad, the ugly, the bad politics, the good politics, the awesome movies and the bad reality TV shows (that still haven’t disappeared).  The straight people, gay people, interracial and special people.

And you know what?  Despite the horror that was 9/11, here’s the thing: in that moment, we fully understood that all must be accepted.  All must come together under one banner, one flag.  That’s slowly been eroding from our practice, again.  NEVER FORGET that we know better.  We've been through it, we shared our sorrows already.  Always remember that:

United We Stand, Divided We Fall.

James Neal is a professional freelancer and, honestly, pioneered the term “Greyhound Therapy.”  It is from his bus trips that he developed his sense of person, and was forced to understand that you must take the “good with the bad.”  You can find his page on Facebook here, or on Twitter @BloodandBlade.  Stop by and say hello…so he’ll stop begging to spend the night…!

THIS WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON ROOSTERWORDS.COM, IN 2012. WHILE ROOSTERWORDS NO LONGER EXISTS, I COULD NOT LET THIS POST DIE IN THE ETHEREAL GRAVEYARD.