Little did she know she’d kissed a hero
Though he’d always been an angel in her eyes
Putting others first its true
That’s what heroes always do
And now he doesn’t need a pair of wings to fly
14 years later it’s still not mine to write about; but at the same time, once it’s been put back in front of my eyes, I can’t not say anything.
It’s hard to believe that it was fourteen years ago. It feels like yesterday. The day of infamy for a new generation, the day the world shook and changed and for a small stretch of time, we were all Americans – even me, who stands as one of the proudest Canadians of them all.
Like the song says – in a New York Minute, everything changed. The world changed, preconceptions fell to pieces like shattered glass and the innocence of most of North America broke all over again.
We’ve come a long way since then…or have we? Have we really?
The bloodshed has not stopped, the threats still loom and the world still lives in a constant state of looking over our shoulders, perhaps even more so than before.
We all have our ways that we remember today; I’m ashamed to say that this morning – for the first time in years – I forgot. I knew that something felt off in the air, something felt unsettled, disjointed, not quite put together properly. I was tense and twitchy and couldn’t seem to settle down; but I didn’t remember the date, not even when I typed it on the screen. It wasn’t until Amras came by the office looking for the quote I usually use to commemorate today that I drew in a breath and realized what it was I’d forgotten. Perhaps that’s a good thing, perhaps we should let it become just another day on the calendar, but that doesn’t seem right, any more than erasing Armistice Day from our collective minds and hearts would be right.
But just because we are so good at remembering does not mean that we are the greatest at honoring.
Those who were on those planes, who gave everything they had to stop the course of disaster – whether they succeeded or not – should not have died for nothing. Out of the smoldering embers of tragedy we were granted the chance to build something united and beautiful – but we didn’t cling to it, we didn’t take it. When the dust settled, we returned to the way things were, to a state of ‘us vs. them’, our lives and been changed, our innocence broken, but instead of remaining banded together and standing strong, we fell back to our comfort zones…resorting to more retaliation, more blood, more tragedy. We are – even now – caught in the midst of an international blood feud, and I sometimes wonder if we will ever find balance again.
They killed my friends!
Yes, so now you’re going to kill them, and then someone else will kill you, and on and on it will go until no one even remembers who [your friends] were, that’s how blood feuds work. Congratulations. ~ Polgara the Sorceress
So how do we combat a tide that’s so strong? How do you fight fear? How do you honor heroes not just remember them or avenge them?
By being a hero yourself.
Remember that heroism does not mean saving thousands of lives on a plane, it does not mean throwing yourself in front of a moving truck to save a child, it doesn’t have to be that big; heroism is in the little things. Donating to the foodbank after a disaster, being a hospital volunteer, giving blood, reading to the kids at the library; even something as small as giving a smile to a stranger on the street, tossing a coin into someone’s change jar. A million little things can make you a hero. If there is one thing that this day fourteen years ago should have taught us, it’s that heroism is not just in the big incredible things that make the news, but in the small things that follow afterwards. In the incredible way the human race can reach for the light in the depths of the dark.
Help each other. Care for each other. Share each other’s joys as well as each other’s miseries. Hold each other up instead of bringing each other down. Don’t just remember that people died, don’t remember the thirst for vengeance, remember the good. Let that be what you carry with you, let that be what you pass on.
We cannot predict the future, but we can realize that peace will only come when the world as a whole wants it so very much that they will stand for nothing else. In the meantime, remember how quickly things can change, remember how easily the universe can shift, and that someone who is just a normal every day person can get up one morning and become a hero.
Remember where you were, remember what happened…and remember that it’s not always the big things that change the world…the small, insignificant acts of individuals, can change the course of history, if we would just let them.
Be safe everyone.