I’ve been thinking about what I want to post on Instagram all day today to mark the 17th anniversary of 9/11. I scrolled through my feed a few times and was surprised to not see any posts to mark this somber day. I was saddened but when I really dig into it, I’m not incredibly surprised.
The attack on the World Trader Center and Pentagon sent a ripple out over the entire world. It was a ripple of fear. Fear of others beliefs, fear of change and progress, fear of being harmed or attacked. While the world mourned around us on the days, months, and years following, fear was given boosts by additional attacks around the globe.
That day marked a fateful shift in how we think and act. Instead of acting from a place of love and compassion, we as a world, have put up barbed wire around ourselves and are on the attack to anyone or anything that frighten us. We are seeing this play out on a grand level in the political climate of the U.S.
As leaders of the free world, we have put a person in power who acts from this place of fear, rather than a place of love and compassion, which we see play out over Twitter, daily. We have never been as divided as a country as we are just 17 years after our country was rocked to its core. We are so at odds with one another that there are podcasts like, “I love you but I hate your politics” (which yes, I’ve listened to, to gain support in speaking with my own loved ones about our differing views).
Everyday, we are bombarded by negativity and hateful (let’s just say it, shameful) commercials aiming to strike fear into constituents about opposing candidates. This is coming from both major parties. Bi-partisan decisions and deliberations are vastly non-existent. I admit that my opinion of a person can be influenced just by seeing a Trump bumper sticker on the back of a car – I don’t even know the person driving!!
Why is this? FEAR. F.E.A.R. Fear has taken ahold of each and every one of us and is driving us right towards a cliff.
I saw a comment on one of the few 9/11 posts I’ve seen so far today asking, “I am genuinely asking, what does ‘never forget’ mean?” I actually think this was being asked from a heartfelt place and it made me take pause and reflect. For me, this means to never forget the lives lost and why they were lost – the men who had their own set of fears of Americans flying the planes. It means remembering to lift one another up as we did in the days following those tragic events. It means interacting with one another from a place of love, acceptance, and empathy. It means dissolving the fear that created the travesty in the first place, not succumbing to it and adding more fuel to its fires.
It is shedding our light through the world to prevent any other days in the future from being as dark as that day was on September 11, 2001.
Love + Light,
Sara