In the movie we watched this past week in class, I got a whole new understanding for what it was like in New York City on September 11, 2001. Usually, when I’m walking down the street and see someone from the army, I have the urge to go up to them and say thank you. But, I never find the courage to. After watching this movie about the New York firefighters, I now know that if I see a firefighter, I will have that same urge. The things those workers did on that horrible day saved people’s lives, even if just by giving them the hope to keep going. They risked their lives for hundreds of people they didn’t even know. On that day, we sat and watched the events on the television. There was always a power switch to turn the TV off—but for them, there wasn’t. The firefighters were in the middle of it. They couldn’t curl up in a ball and cry in fear like most of us could. They had to have courage to overcome their fear of death, or much worse, to even step inside Tower One. Then, they had to climb up hundreds of stairs, each step knowing they were getting closer to what had already taken so many lives. And as people came down past them, they had to tell them it was okay and to keep going down, even though they knew it probably wouldn’t be okay.
In the article “Don’t Listen to Romney: America Is Safer Than Ever,” by Michael Cohen, he captures the contradiction of safety in America. We have deadly enough weapons to put an end to the world with the push of a button in almost every country, and yet, we feel safer than we did ten years ago. Cohen really addresses how Mitt Romney made a good point in his speech: “that the world is becoming a safer place.” We look back on September 11, 2001 and question as to how we could let it happen. It truly is reassuring knowing that now something like that is far less possible. We constantly complain about the procedures at airports, but the truth is that wouldn’t you rather get to the airport an hour early and stand in a line if it meant it could save your life? One of the interesting things Cohen pointed out was that China’s economy relies a lot on a strong American one. If America fell apart to the point where it could no longer purchase from China, they would lose the majority of their exports and income. That’s another reason why the world seems more safe and peaceful now more than before; we rely on one another. China isn’t launching off bombs at us due to our debt to them, because they know that if the situation were ever to be flipped around, America would help them. One last thing is that no one wants to enter into a nuclear war, because everyone will lose. If Iran nuked us, we would nuke them and someone else would nuke someone else and so on and so forth. No one wants that. Everything will be gone, and no one will have proven a point. It’s almost as if our paranoia of a nuclear war is keeping the world at bay.
Nine eleven still seems almost unrealistic, like a movie. It just seems impossible that something like this could ever happen. It makes you re-think how you live your life every day. Every time I hear the numbers nine and eleven together, I know that I just won’t think of them as two numbers. They represent so much more. Those people woke up that day, thinking about a normal day; a normal life. But then everything changed. Every time I’m on a plane, I just consider it…consider what could happen. When I was little, I liked to collect a lot of things. We not only lost hundreds of lives, but we lost faith. We lost the ability to go on a plane and not think twice about it. We lost the ability to hear the numbers nine and eleven together and think of them as anything but numbers. We lost our ability to think about anything other than how evil reality can be. We lost our reason to feel safe—that when it came time when someone hijacked a plane that a miracle would happen to save us. We lost hope and faith, and just that tiny ounce of miracle we all sought. We gained reality, and the fact that miracles don’t always happen. That to you, you cannot die: this is your life, but to the man in that cockpit, you’re just another enemy. I would collect rocks, change, candy, scissors, pencils, string, and rubber bands and pretty much anything I could get my hands on. When I flew somewhere, I would pack all of these things loose in my carry-on bag for whatever reason. When I opened it up on the plane, people would ask me why I brought that stuff with me, and I would explain why each of my seventeen rocks was important. They found it cute…and innocent. Now, I see kids trying to do the same thing I did—bring the simplest things that they loved and made them happy on the plane. But no one sees it as cute and innocent anymore—they see it as a threat. I once saw a boy hysterically crying at security because he had sharp rocks in his bag that they would not allow him to bring on the plane. He was seven years old, and his name was Michael. Just ten minutes before he had explained to me what every rock’s super power was. He looked at them as if they were the only thing in the world that mattered to him. And now they were being taken away for a reason he won’t ever understand. How far will we go to ensure our safety? That’s the one question I cannot answer.
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