When I saw the call for responses to the question, "How has 9/11 changed you?' I dashed off my opinion. It's included in today's Washington Post coverage of 9/11 under the "Age of 9/11" section, separated by ages. I'm in the 32 - 44 section. Here it is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/age-of-9-11/
Before 9/11 I was many things. After 9/11 I am fewer things, but better things.
On 9/11 America saw evil. Unabashed, unapologetic evil. This was a first for me at the time; a housewife, aged 34, pregnant, with a 2-year-old daughter.
I remembered, as a child, seeing a television film about the Holocaust (from which I still remember scenes, though not the title) and I began to understand that the world had witnessed evil in Nazi Germany in WWII and in other times throughout history. I harbored that knowledge, but it was over 20 years later before I felt it viscerally on 9/11.
Later that evening we watched on TV with our neighbors scenes of Palestinian women dancing in the streets over America's blow; the shock and sorrow of our American brothers and sisters; the early desperate hopes for rescue amidst the sinking realization that so much was lost forever -- including the innocence of a generation.
I will never be the same. This evil had names and faces, and a searing image that I now knew personally. To be attacked not for our wrongdoing, but because of who we are (the Jews understood this in Nazi Germany), required newfound strength -- personally and as a nation -- and justified retaliation. Seeing evil demands mighty and resolute goodness of heart and mind; and the fortitude to stand up for what you believe, and for who you are.
I grew up that day. In one day I understood true evil. 9/11 choked away any waffling and untested opinions about relative evils.
Adulthood (and paying taxes, having children, etc.), regardless of history, tends to move a person towards defining one's life, actions, opinions, and beliefs. And 9/11 tinged all those things with the reality of evil. When I was a child I looked away from the television and imagined evil. Now, how perilous it would be to look away, when I KNOW that evil exists and is powerful!
Since 9/11 my husband and I had two more children (that makes 3) and I started a business, which is growing. My identity is incomplete without describing myself as an American.
In spite of evil in all its many forms, the biggest lesson after 10 years: goodness and love always win in the end. And it's not the end yet.
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