Can it really be 17 years?.............,"It was an odd morning for me. I *never* used to turn on my TV for the lunchtime news (1pm BST here in UK), preferring the more in depth coverage of evening broadcasts.
On Sept 11th 2001 I had a compulsion to turn the TV on & I turned on about a minute before the 2nd plane struck. I thought I was watching a documentary of a computer generated ""doomsday"" style scenario. I flicked channels to see that 2 others (of 4) had the same images.
Some people think that disaster doesn't have the same impact across distance or time, media talks of de-sensitizing from prolonged exposure to disaster images but I'm here to say it does *still* have a mighty impact. Natural disasters are horrifying in their wantoness but how much more so when it's man-made?!
There wasn't disbelief (I wish there had been as it would have meant I had a better image of the world!) just a shock response at the scale of destruction, which had me reeling. I watched in stunned silence knowing that something important had just happened, a shift, a turning point, something that would mean that my life would never quite be the same again.
I lost no-one there, I knew no-one there - but I felt the waves of emotional pain from a world gone mad and hoped it would stop.
It hasn't.
The only images I need to see now, to feel those waves of emotion, are the ones of the NY skyline since then The change speaks volumes.
I truly believe we should never forget, for that way lies complacency and I'm not sure *any* nation can afford complacency. We should not forget why it happened, but we should also not forget, not only the people who were killed & hurt, but the people who were one day colleagues and the next day heroes. I don't belittle anyone who was just out to save their own life, but I think the world *needs* heroes too & they're too often overlooked when we are beating ourselves up over the fact that these kind of things happen.
On a daily basis the heroes of the police force, fire departments and hospital staff are overlooked despite the fact that they are always doing amazing jobs of protecting & caring for us all, but also the heroes who ""didn't know they had it in them"" are important - in the sense that these individuals show us all what we are capable of accomplishing."
On Sept 11th 2001 I had a compulsion to turn the TV on & I turned on about a minute before the 2nd plane struck. I thought I was watching a documentary of a computer generated ""doomsday"" style scenario. I flicked channels to see that 2 others (of 4) had the same images.
Some people think that disaster doesn't have the same impact across distance or time, media talks of de-sensitizing from prolonged exposure to disaster images but I'm here to say it does *still* have a mighty impact. Natural disasters are horrifying in their wantoness but how much more so when it's man-made?!
There wasn't disbelief (I wish there had been as it would have meant I had a better image of the world!) just a shock response at the scale of destruction, which had me reeling. I watched in stunned silence knowing that something important had just happened, a shift, a turning point, something that would mean that my life would never quite be the same again.
I lost no-one there, I knew no-one there - but I felt the waves of emotional pain from a world gone mad and hoped it would stop.
It hasn't.
The only images I need to see now, to feel those waves of emotion, are the ones of the NY skyline since then The change speaks volumes.
I truly believe we should never forget, for that way lies complacency and I'm not sure *any* nation can afford complacency. We should not forget why it happened, but we should also not forget, not only the people who were killed & hurt, but the people who were one day colleagues and the next day heroes. I don't belittle anyone who was just out to save their own life, but I think the world *needs* heroes too & they're too often overlooked when we are beating ourselves up over the fact that these kind of things happen.
On a daily basis the heroes of the police force, fire departments and hospital staff are overlooked despite the fact that they are always doing amazing jobs of protecting & caring for us all, but also the heroes who ""didn't know they had it in them"" are important - in the sense that these individuals show us all what we are capable of accomplishing."
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