How easy it is to forget

September 11th, 2024

I won't forget. Not only because I was just next door to where it happened and saw the smoke and the collapse from the (safe) distance as it happened. Not only because a person I knew perished in the collapse of the North Tower. Not only because of the purely political and, in a wider scope, geopolitical implications that still reverberate today — possibly even stronger than in the first years after it happened. I won’t forget it because I feel like the innocence and exuberance of the 1990s were lost on that day. I won’t forget it because the bright hope for the upcoming decade was lost on that day. After a decade when everything seemed possible, all the changes for the better were happening almost daily, and the future (if not wholly rosy) seemed to be predictable — a wholesale terror killing of more than 3000 innocent people was unfathomable. And it has brought on effects of which the totalitarian ripples are not only being felt today, but are actually getting stronger and more encompassing.

I wonder if I would show that photo above to people, especially people under thirty, would they know what it shows? I wonder if many people would know what I am writing about here, especially since I purposely haven't used any dates or a link. On some level, I wouldn't blame them. So many horrible things have happened in the last two decades that it might seem like an insignificant event from the past. People forget all kinds of things. Some don't even learn enough to forget them — which is worse. Doesn’t matter. I won’t forget.