September 11th: The Personal and the Political

It’s strange to look back on the events of September 11th from such a distance now, and realize how much it has influenced all of us, both personally and politically. I was a senior at Barnard College in 2001, still possessing a sense of absolute invincibility, still pretty faithful in the innate goodness of politicians (even if I acknowledged some corruption), still pretty unabashedly self-focused.
The eerie vision of women bankers finally making it up to 116th with their high heels in hand, soot on their suits, the deep sense of shock and insecurity, the realization that I was so far from my family, changed everything for me–as I know it did for so many young Americans.
And when I think about the ways in which it changed government–pushing big daddy protector politics to the forefront and diplomacy and domestic welfare to the background–it makes me deeply sad. It prompted a whole new generation of violence, death, injury, mental illness, alienation. But it also led to such a chaotic, lost civic landscape, that it catalyzed the American people to hunger for real, bonafide change. And that’s where we are today…a place of guarded hope, an ache for renewal, an earned belief in the need for peace.
The personal and the political in its most grave form. The day so many Americans, especially the young, were forced to reckon with our own power or lack thereof.
(Above pic from The New York Times.)