An actual 9/11 thread.

[stabbyhappy]

How do you feel about 9/11 after so many years? Have your opinions or emotions changed?

Please dont turn this into an apology for Radical Islam or Bush hating thread. Im genuinely interested in your response.

[xerxes]

I live in New York City and when it happened I was uptown from all the action but was able to see the towers on fire then the smoke cloud after they came down. I also got to see the mass of people running uptown some without shoes others covered in ash. For years I had the reaction of "that really happened". I don't know if its time or maybe it has something to do with it being the weekend and not having to go into work but I don't feel anything about it right now. I think iv just put the past in the past. I have however also made it a point to not put the TV or any kind of news on just because I don't want to hear about 9/11.

[Spanky McDuck]

Originally Posted by stabbyhappy

How do you feel about 9/11 after so many years? Have your opinions or emotions changed?

Please dont turn this into an apology for Radical Islam or Bush hating thread. Im genuinely interested in your response.

I'm 45, married (27 years), have 3 grown kids, and live in NC and have never been to New York. I did not know anyone personally who was affected. However, 9/11 affected me personally quite a bit. Not sure why. I think it was because I was burnt-out at my job at the time and not sure what I wanted from life. I had just turned in my 2 week notice at work and I had another job lined up that fell through after 9/11. I spent the next 18 months looking for another programming job but found nothing. I watched them repo everything we had one thing at a time. I spent way too much time reading news reports and watching 9/11 footage and it really, really affected me.

I didn't see a shrink or anything but I knew that my life would not be the same. It sounds corny now, but I felt like I was not really living my life. So I changed things. I 'retired' from software development, cashed in my 401K and profit sharing, and took a few years off to decide what I wanted to do. I started back to college a few years ago and I am now going to East Carolina University to become a teacher.

Don't read too much into this. I wasn't overly depressed or walking around like a zombie or anything, but it did change me as a person. I came out of my shell over the last few years and I am doing things on my bucket-list when ever I can. I recently took up cycling and in two weeks I am riding from the mountains to the coast in NC (450 miles or so). Life is short enough as it is. I do not want to die wishing I had done this or that.

As for the 'religious' aspect, I only want to say one thing (and I'm not here to argue about religion). I harbor no resentment for any particular religion. Christians (and others) have done things just as bad if not worse in their 2000+ year history.
So, there you go. You asked. :-) I too would like to hear stories from others.

[Bucho]

Whenever I think about it I still find it amazing that it occured at all. Not as in the "no way could a bunch of camel jockeys with box-cutters accomplish that" conspiracy kind of way, but in a "some guy came up with the idea to hijack multiple airliners and fly them into iconic American buildings, and he put together a team and succeeded." It's the ridiculous B-movie script that it turns out wasn't ridiculous at all. It made me re-think what is possible and what is not possible to accomplish in the real world, especially in terms of how vulnerable we actually are without knowing it a lot of the time.

The biggest effect it had on me was in terms of political awareness - in that I started paying more attention to American and Middle East history and politics - much more than emotionally. Massive natural events like the Boxing Day Tsunami and Haitian earthquake have hit me in the heart harder than 9/11 did, just because the scale of the destruction and suffering was on a much greater scale than 9/11.

The one emotional chord it still hits with me is when I think of the firemen and police who entered the broken and burning towers that day. Because even in a city reknowned for its selfishness and belligerance, it was their instinct and their duty to help other people. Whether they had any idea of the potential final outcome doesn't matter so much, but the people who choose to put themselves in harm's way so that they can remove other people from harm's way are my favourite type of people. They're the ones I salute on 9/11.

[archicat]

Originally Posted by Bucho

Whenever I think about it I still find it amazing that it occured at all. Not as in the "no way could a bunch of camel jockeys with box-cutters accomplish that" conspiracy kind of way, but in a "some guy came up with the idea to hijack multiple airliners and fly them into iconic American buildings, and he put together a team and succeeded." It's the ridiculous B-movie script that it turns out wasn't ridiculous at all. It made me re-think what is possible and what is not possible to accomplish in the real world, especially in terms of how vulnerable we actually are without knowing it a lot of the time.

The biggest effect it had on me was in terms of political awareness - in that I started paying more attention to American and Middle East history and politics - much more than emotionally. Massive natural events like the Boxing Day Tsunami and Haitian earthquake have hit me in the heart harder than 9/11 did, just because the scale of the destruction and suffering was on a much greater scale than 9/11.

The one emotional chord it still hits with me is when I think of the firemen and police who entered the broken and burning towers that day. Because even in a city reknowned for its selfishness and belligerance, it was their instinct and their duty to help other people. Whether they had any idea of the potential final outcome doesn't matter so much, but the people who choose to put themselves in harm's way so that they can remove other people from harm's way are my favourite type of people. They're the ones I salute on 9/11.

This guy is a fuckin' wordsmith. I couldn't have put it better myself and I won't try but - this is pretty much how I thought about it.

Actually the past couple of days I've watched a few documentaries about it and they gave me the chills.

[picard102]

I still feel bad for those poor buildings. Man I would have liked to have seen them in person.

Originally Posted by Bucho

The one emotional chord it still hits with me is when I think of the firemen and police who entered the broken and burning towers that day.

Ya that's not so fun to think about. Way to bring me down man.

[FreydNot]

I live on the West Coast and have visited NY briefly once on business.

The TV images of people leaping off the towers to their deaths still occasionally haunt me. The despair they must have felt really drives the point home.

[Rhian]

Originally Posted by archicat

This guy is a fuckin' wordsmith. I couldn't have put it better myself and I won't try but - this is pretty much how I thought about it.

Agreed. Thank you Bucho.

It affected me alot too, living in the capital of Canada, we weren't sure what was going to happen here. Without getting into 'where I was when...' it was horrible and surreal. A few days later I was on a bus to work, and got off a few blocks away. My studio at the time was in the basement that shared a building with a western union suite. Getting off the bus, a woman in a hijab got off with me and grabbed my arm, that I had my CDs and stereo and all my teaching things in it. No I didn't think she was going to do anything, but it did hurt (I think I was starting to get sick by then), and she asked me if I was afraid of her. I said not at all, and we walked and talked the rest of the way as she went to wire money home as she told me, and I went down to teach.

Once the war fully started, one of my classes were full of little ones. They wanted to talk about what was happening as they (and we all were) concerned and scared. One little girl asked how war worked - and if 'they each stood on one side behind a line, and took turns shooting at each other. If they missed, do they go to the back of the line and wait for their turn again?'

They will stay with me forever.

Meh, I'm a mush, get over it.

[fluxquanta]

I've put it behind me.

[amyuilani]

The only major event to happen in my lifetime prior to 9/11 was the Challenger explosion, so I had no perspective. Even hurricanes and earthquakes never bothered me because they are natural disasters and they're coming, no matter what. This was the first time I really felt scared by what man is capable of doing, and the first time I really felt powerless as an American. Like most of us, I never thought we would have a major attack on our own soil. In the grand scheme of life, it is not as destructive as other events, but in this life and these times, 9/11 was the first reminder that we really need to take the rest of the world much more seriously because they are much more aware of what is going on around them than we are. It wasn't just us - it was also London a couple of years earlier.

Nine years later, I also hope we have learned that not all Muslims are terrorists and deserve the discrimination they still sometimes receive. I hope we are smarter than to continue to blame everyone for the actions of a few.