"Humanity"

Have you noticed the change going on? Well, for one, this website is different, of course. Lots of gray-blue, and such. But I'm not referring to that, specifically. It seems to me, and this is just my personal point of view, that there is a new air about this earth. I know everyone will look upon this time as an historic moment. As I sit here, I feel that weight of importance pressing down upon me, as though I'm supposed to be acknowledging the significance of now with every breath I take.

Yet, with an undeserved guilty conscience, I have gone on with my life. I say undeserved, because I, of course, had nothing to do with what happened, and I have to keep going. But, as so many people have mentioned in the last month (has it really been a month already?), I feel bad about living my life again, as I have been doing for over 22 years now. I feel as though somehow I should alter my existence forever to commemorate the lives lost. But I haven't, and so I feel guilty.

This time has opened my mind to the nature of humanity. I think that something of this magnitude is not a something which the average human can comprehend. We come up with all kinds of subtle defense mechanisms to shield ourselves from the horror we see and feel. I've noticed that phrases which would normally elicit strong emotional reactions have become plasticized, removing them from their original definition. I keep hearing words like "national tragedy", and people referring to "these tragic events", and "the day of terror". So often are these phrases repeated that we don't take them at face value anymore. They've reverted back to the very basis of vocabulary and language, that is, words used to communicate. No longer do they have an emotional attachment to them. I feel like there is an evil, dark lord that no one is allowed to speak of. As in The Lord of the Rings (which I, along with half the literate population of America, am reading before the movie comes out), we now have a "He That Shall Not Be Named". By taking the horrid emotional connotation away from "terrorist attacks", we can begin to come to grips with the enormity of the loss of life, and the significance of "the events of September 11th".

-c