Not that anybody asked me, but…
I didn’t read much of the “anniversary” coverage yesterday, not wanting to relive the horror that others seem to revel in, exhorting us to remember, as if anyone could ever forget. I woke up to the radio playing audio clips of eye-witness reporting as the second plane hit the towers, and when El Rey walked in the room I said “Will you turn that off, please?” It was too much to bear.
Five years ago today, I was supposed to be on a plane to South Bend, Indiana, to do a training in the city of my birth. I didn’t get on that plane; nobody in the country got on a plane for another month, as the country reeled in shock, horror, fear, and grief. I read the newspaper every day and wept. The carnage, the death, the despair, was overwhelming, and I was not even someone who was personally affected by the loss of a loved one in the various tragedies of the day before. I was just a human being who was deeply touched by such incalculable loss. This went on for months for me, and in many ways, we have not gotten over it as a nation. Much of that is calculated; the current regime has picked at the scab to keep it bleeding for five years to further its own agenda and keep people afraid and silent. But some of it is genuine and sincere, and remains because it speaks to the unanswered question in everyone’s mind: What kind of monster do you have to be to murder on this scale and believe in your heart of hearts that you are right, and righteous? Then again, I don’t know what kind of monster you have to be to murder even a single person, because it indicates no respect for life at all.
I read the headlines every day of suicide bombers and murders and train bombs, and a host of other examples of humans visiting evil upon each other, and I think about losing A. I see the photos of women wailing in the streets, throwing themselves upon the bodies, and I understand. I understand only too well their anguish. I think about the horrendous pain I feel, the endless missing him, the bewilderment I feel even now that it occurred, the injustice, and I think to myself, “If people really understood that they were delivering these feelings to people, if they really understood what kind of emotional havoc they were wreaking on other human beings, most of whom were just innocent bystanders who were just going to church, going to temple, going to work, they wouldn’t do this to each other.”
When I think about 9/11, I don’t think about Bush. I don’t think about Al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden or the war or the politics since. What I thought about then and what I think about now are the 2,973 people who died, and the family and friends of those people, and the hell they are probably still going through. I wouldn’t wish this pain on my worst enemy. I think if people really stopped to think, if they understood what kind of pain they were creating, there would be peace on earth, because no one who has experienced the traumatic loss of a loved one would ever be willing to visit that pain upon another human soul on purpose.
And then I think about how many of those who would kill must know this pain, must have had it happen to them, and that maybe it is revenge that motivates them. But I don’t really know how you could ever feel good about making someone feel as horrible as you do, even on the smallest scale. It reminds me of a time when I was a child; I couldn’t have been more than 5 years old, and we were coming home from the county fair. I had lost my balloon, but my little brother’s was still tied to his wrist. Until I untied it and “accidentally” let it go out the window. If I didn’t have a balloon anymore, HE certainly wasn’t going to have one, either. I didn’t feel better for having done it; there was no pain relief in parity. He cried. I felt like a shit AND got yelled at, and rightly so. I learned that lesson at 5, and I’ve remembered the incident all these years. Revenge may appease your sense of justice, but I cannot see how it would be comforting in the least. Knowing someone else is hurting just as much as I am doesn’t give me peace, even if I don’t like them; it doesn’t make me happy. It makes me sad. And I wonder what kind of madness finally brings you to the point where you don’t give a damn, where your only satisfaction is making others as miserable as yourself.
And I think those who give orders and press buttons (on all sides) and don’t have to watch their loved ones die and deal with the aftermath of soul-shredding grief have it far too easy. If that about-to-be-bereaved mother sat next to them and said “If you give that order, you will take my child from me and leave me a shell of human being,” could the person give the order? Could you? Could you send a missile into a house with children in it just to get one bad guy? Hasn’t there got to be another way?
What if we, and by “we” I mean every one of 6 billion individual human souls on this planet, stopped thinking in terms of politics and geography and power and historic vendetta and thought about things, all things, in purely human terms: What will this action do to people? What will this action do to human hearts?” This would be a very different world; and I think we would be finally acting from the right place. What I don’t understand (one of millions of things I don’t understand) is how anyone with a heart, anyone who has loved, anyone who has lived as a human being on this planet, finds it so hard to understand other people, and be sympathetic. It would seem to me no mystery. How can you not understand the Israeli point of view? And how can you not understand the Palestinian frustration? And how can they not manage to understand each other? How would I feel if my loved one had gone to the temple for prayers and was blown up by a neighboring supplicant who was wearing dynamite? How would I feel if my loved one got on a bus to go get groceries, and never came home because the bus was blown up? And what have you become if the answer that comes to mind for you is “I’d feel horrible, but I’m doing it anyway, because it’s someone else”? How does one manage to divorce one’s self so from humanity, from human reality, to be able to get to that point?
I don’t know. I just don’t know.