Ellington

Good morning, 9/11 generation. It's been six years since our world changed, and what do we have to show for it? The military is no longer a career; it is a vocation. War is no longer an abstract concept; we know what war is and we see what it does—not only to the country waging it, but also the country upon whose soil the war is being fought. We are (hopefully) no longer indifferent to political elections; no matter your leaning, you now realize that the vote you cast matters and can impact your life.

The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, means different things to different people. For my two friends Tim and Jill, it was, respectively, their 18th and 21st birthdays. For art students at St. Joseph Catholic School, where I was a senior on that fateful day, it was the day of the field trip to the art museum. For the 9/11 hijackers, it was their last day on earth—their pathway to paradise.

The afternoon was quite different. No longer was it a day of celebration; it was time to mourn. No longer was it a day of carelessness; it was time to reflect on our vulnerability. No longer was it time to reap a reward; Allah surely recognizes the difference between a man of faith and a man of terror.

The Clarion-Ledger recently interviewed current high school students—middle-schoolers on 9/11—about their remembrances of the day. But I say people nearer my age are the true "products" of 9/11. We clearly remember the world before and after the attacks. We came of age in an environment drastically changed from that of our childhoods.

Before, Islam was simply a religion; now, twisted extremists define it as an ideology of hate. Before, Afghanistan was a country somewhere "over there"; now, it is a battleground where some of our peers have been unlucky enough to die. Before, our futures held promise; now, while not grim, the future has a dark cloud hanging over it, and promises previously held out before us are not so certain anymore.

Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, begins at sundown on Sept. 21. Perhaps we should all take time to reflect, not necessarily on our failures of the past year (few hearts and minds have been won), but on how we live our lives in the post-9/11 world. Has fear made us sacrifice the things for which our country used to stand, or are we reacting justifiably to very real threats? I'm sorry to say I have no answer to that question.

I keep remembering the pictures of those babies born after 9/11 whose fathers died in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. Those children entered this world with as much hope as we did. Isn't it our duty as the inheritors of the 9/11 legacy to permit them to live in a world where safety is, if not guaranteed, at least attainable?

We owe them that, and we certainly owe that to the men who never saw their children come kicking and screaming into the world, demanding their rightful places.

—Jenna Phillips Murphy, Madison