Alive Enough to Live
EvilToasterElf
Posts: 1,119
I am a columnist here at the school paper, and I wanted to use that space to manifest all the thoughts that have been raging inside of me for three years. I like the way the column came out so I thought I'd share it with you all.
Alive enough to live
By Steve Wheat
Columnist
It has been over 1,000 days since we lived through the unparalleled horror of Sept. 11 and watched the hand of death sweep through the nation. The horror of that day has woven itself into the fabric of the 21st century and the lives of all who live in this age.
Every day after that unforgettable moment in time, a small part of us is reminded that we are not just Americans or Europeans, Britons or French, rich or poor, black or white, man or woman, or any label other than “human.” We share a common past, crawling together over glaciers into a time of agricultural prosperity and marching forth as one from our homes into factories. We are all familiar with the feeling of being helpless to the greater forces in the world. On that day, humanity collectively shielded its eyes though was doomed to watch as the horrors unfolded. All that remains of those holes in the New York City skyline is the memory of the lives forever lost. As the videos spread to every channel, across every language, the memories grew. They spread invisible tendrils from ground zero until the world was wrapped in a cocoon. The whole of humanity somehow broke from a trance, becoming more aware of its own precious fragility. We all fell with those towers; we all went to sleep with fire in our nostrils; we all woke up in the middle of the night pounding our heads against the pillow to shake the falling dust from our dreams.
On that day, we all watched the events unfold on TV and some of us, for the first time, knew evil. We knew that something truly, profoundly frightening had penetrated the modern veil of our desensitization to violence and death. We realized that the most poignant horror we could all face was the colossal waste of human life. To be evil was to erase any wish for life, love, humor or beauty. I now know evil; I know because this evil will never leave me; this evil exists in my mind. All the moments when my mind returns to the numbness of peace, those moments right before I fall asleep are filled with faces. My mind shuffles through the faces of those employees whose brows had not yet cringed with the lines of age, with a fulfilled life. Those faces of the dead are forever frozen in youth. My mind has become a cryptic photo album and I will never know a child’s peace again. That is the impression evil has left on me.
But as is with human nature, there are opposites, and Sept. 11 brought out the strongest of both human emotions. Some will remember nothing of that day but the thousands of faces crowding around buildings and down blocks. Others recall the lines of people waiting to give blood and those who rushed downtown to donate money to the victims. They might remember the walls of Trinity Church wreathed in a cascade of flowers and pictures and handwritten notes creating a community in which all were bonded together in a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy.
It is both comforting and frightening that overwhelming pain and grief has been the most important equalizing force of this generation. There was no competition over whose pain was greater, over whose feelings were more important. We all embraced each other, huddling together, waiting for an answer that would never come. Those of us who had not seen war, who had not experienced depression or famine, who had not survived pandemic or epidemic knew that our role in history was at hand. On Sept. 11, when the first plane hit the North Tower and the sirens rang below, a call went out, a call more vivid and demanding than any draft. It penetrated into the beating heart of civilization, and we mobilized, answering more quickly than the generations of our fathers and grandfathers, because we answered that call without being forced. We answered from the depths of our genetic code, called by our very humanity. Some of us sought nobly to swell the ranks of the armed forces and defend what we loved by force, but the great majority of us cried and screamed and then we marched. We didn’t pick up our rifles; we didn’t pick up our helmets. We picked up our signs and our hearts and our voices and we marched across the planet to prevent more violence. This is where I found my hope for the future.
I believe that we survived our test. Though we may have panicked at first, we are coming to our senses. The pendulum of our strength is swinging back to the point in the arc when our voices will frighten the makers of war, for we act with the faith born of memory and compassion. The realization will dawn that tactics of forward defense do not justify battling the intangible, the ideals of the opposition. The only suicide tactic I could see was to maintain faith that the hopeless human misery that spawned the attack on America that day could be fought with laser-guided bombs.
The struggles that began on that day reach far beyond the bounds of battling armies and terrorists. The struggle that for most of us began on Sept. 11 flows into the question of how to live our lives. That day has taught me that to simply exist is too easy — existence requires nothing more from us than being conscious, than being awake. To creep between half-hearted responsibilities inside the habits that life has forced upon us is cowardice. To live requires courage; it requires the will to stop in the middle of our commute to work and write down the thought that occupied the ride, to turn off the TV during the commercial break instead of flipping through the channels and walk to a place we’ve never been before.
I am convinced that it is not the duty of any individual to spend their lives combating evil. Evil is as much a part of us as good. It is the part of our nature that hides just far enough under the surface to balance our curiosity, but it is our most important and sacred responsibility to acknowledge this evil, to find it within ourselves and survive in spite of it. For once we do this, we are all alive enough to live.
Alive enough to live
By Steve Wheat
Columnist
It has been over 1,000 days since we lived through the unparalleled horror of Sept. 11 and watched the hand of death sweep through the nation. The horror of that day has woven itself into the fabric of the 21st century and the lives of all who live in this age.
Every day after that unforgettable moment in time, a small part of us is reminded that we are not just Americans or Europeans, Britons or French, rich or poor, black or white, man or woman, or any label other than “human.” We share a common past, crawling together over glaciers into a time of agricultural prosperity and marching forth as one from our homes into factories. We are all familiar with the feeling of being helpless to the greater forces in the world. On that day, humanity collectively shielded its eyes though was doomed to watch as the horrors unfolded. All that remains of those holes in the New York City skyline is the memory of the lives forever lost. As the videos spread to every channel, across every language, the memories grew. They spread invisible tendrils from ground zero until the world was wrapped in a cocoon. The whole of humanity somehow broke from a trance, becoming more aware of its own precious fragility. We all fell with those towers; we all went to sleep with fire in our nostrils; we all woke up in the middle of the night pounding our heads against the pillow to shake the falling dust from our dreams.
On that day, we all watched the events unfold on TV and some of us, for the first time, knew evil. We knew that something truly, profoundly frightening had penetrated the modern veil of our desensitization to violence and death. We realized that the most poignant horror we could all face was the colossal waste of human life. To be evil was to erase any wish for life, love, humor or beauty. I now know evil; I know because this evil will never leave me; this evil exists in my mind. All the moments when my mind returns to the numbness of peace, those moments right before I fall asleep are filled with faces. My mind shuffles through the faces of those employees whose brows had not yet cringed with the lines of age, with a fulfilled life. Those faces of the dead are forever frozen in youth. My mind has become a cryptic photo album and I will never know a child’s peace again. That is the impression evil has left on me.
But as is with human nature, there are opposites, and Sept. 11 brought out the strongest of both human emotions. Some will remember nothing of that day but the thousands of faces crowding around buildings and down blocks. Others recall the lines of people waiting to give blood and those who rushed downtown to donate money to the victims. They might remember the walls of Trinity Church wreathed in a cascade of flowers and pictures and handwritten notes creating a community in which all were bonded together in a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy.
It is both comforting and frightening that overwhelming pain and grief has been the most important equalizing force of this generation. There was no competition over whose pain was greater, over whose feelings were more important. We all embraced each other, huddling together, waiting for an answer that would never come. Those of us who had not seen war, who had not experienced depression or famine, who had not survived pandemic or epidemic knew that our role in history was at hand. On Sept. 11, when the first plane hit the North Tower and the sirens rang below, a call went out, a call more vivid and demanding than any draft. It penetrated into the beating heart of civilization, and we mobilized, answering more quickly than the generations of our fathers and grandfathers, because we answered that call without being forced. We answered from the depths of our genetic code, called by our very humanity. Some of us sought nobly to swell the ranks of the armed forces and defend what we loved by force, but the great majority of us cried and screamed and then we marched. We didn’t pick up our rifles; we didn’t pick up our helmets. We picked up our signs and our hearts and our voices and we marched across the planet to prevent more violence. This is where I found my hope for the future.
I believe that we survived our test. Though we may have panicked at first, we are coming to our senses. The pendulum of our strength is swinging back to the point in the arc when our voices will frighten the makers of war, for we act with the faith born of memory and compassion. The realization will dawn that tactics of forward defense do not justify battling the intangible, the ideals of the opposition. The only suicide tactic I could see was to maintain faith that the hopeless human misery that spawned the attack on America that day could be fought with laser-guided bombs.
The struggles that began on that day reach far beyond the bounds of battling armies and terrorists. The struggle that for most of us began on Sept. 11 flows into the question of how to live our lives. That day has taught me that to simply exist is too easy — existence requires nothing more from us than being conscious, than being awake. To creep between half-hearted responsibilities inside the habits that life has forced upon us is cowardice. To live requires courage; it requires the will to stop in the middle of our commute to work and write down the thought that occupied the ride, to turn off the TV during the commercial break instead of flipping through the channels and walk to a place we’ve never been before.
I am convinced that it is not the duty of any individual to spend their lives combating evil. Evil is as much a part of us as good. It is the part of our nature that hides just far enough under the surface to balance our curiosity, but it is our most important and sacred responsibility to acknowledge this evil, to find it within ourselves and survive in spite of it. For once we do this, we are all alive enough to live.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird