12 years ago today was a day of anguish for the world as the unthinkable happened in Manhattan. Even as a teenager, I lived on US time and was awake to watch the horror unfold from start to end. The experience is something I will never forget. As much as I would have liked to look away from the TV screen, I was compelled to watch. Half a world away, I was watching extraordinarily many lives taken away by a senseless act of terrorism – that much was certain to me from the first moments it was reported an aircraft had crashed into the World Trade Centre.
There’s a degree of disbelief when I first saw images of the burning building. I thought perhaps it was an aviation accident; because to think it was a deliberate act was far too horrifying and altogether too sinister. But that little hope in humankind was extinguished swiftly as another aircraft struck the other tower. Watching it happen on screen was surreal enough, so imagine the people at ground zero witnessing it first hand.. It must have been a gut-wrenching dread. From 9/11 thus grew the seed of evil that was terrorism. Mass murder to make a point was now in vogue. It was to me, that humanity was at its bleakest hour.
What I remember most vividly of the night of 9/11 is the overwhelming sense of helplessness. To be hoping desperately that people I didn’t know would somehow survive against the odds was something I knew logically to be near impossible. I think I didn’t want to believe people could be so cruel, that fate could be so cruel to people whose time was not supposed to come just yet. There must have been many people who died of regrets that day. That was a truly saddening thought to me. The victims, they have died for nothing more than to make a idealistic statement. It was so selfish; it was so unfair, and I was furious and indignant for them.
9/11 brought out the worst and also the best in people. Strangers came together to help each other in their time of need, first responders didn’t hesitate to get into a collapsing building to save lives. How hard it must have been to not think and not feel in that terrible time and focus on what needs to be done at their personal risk. It takes a whole lot of strength to have shoved the fear aside and stared death in the face. Now as we remember 9/11 each year, we honor the people at ground zero as heroes. The many men, women and even animals who worked endlessly for days and days afterwards searching the debris.. I think that hopelessness and despair eats away at the soul far worse than death could ever do.
Here safe and sound in Singapore, we are unlikely to see tragedy on such a scale happen. I am ever thankful that we are so very fortunate. As I told a twitter follower, sometimes I think it’s great we are small and insignificant in the global arena to have to take sides in conflicts and thereby thrusting ourselves in the line of fire. We were discussing Syria, but I think it’s true for many other issues we have not had to deal with as a nation. America does not have that luxury, and the price it has paid for that power and influence is a big one that we should not be envious of. If anything, I sympathize. Sometimes when a choice has to be made in a lose-lose situation, you wonder why you must choose.
Many wars have been fought in the Middle East in the past decade and likely, more still will erupt. I still call it a clash of ideologies because I dislike the talk of religion in warfare. I see that as a pathetic excuse for acts of great cruelty to humankind. Terrorism is dirty to me. I dislike underhand methods and the use of fear to manipulate people and situations. Senseless loss of life is unacceptable. But though that is President Obama’s point for a strike in Syria, I find that a reply to senseless deaths in the form of more deaths is equally senseless. Terrorism has the scary ability to drag us down to the level of violent retaliation. Is it revenge? Because it is so unjust, and so unnecessary, it strokes a fury inside us all that clouds the measure of means and ends.
9/11 transformed the world and made people see how humans could be capable of such evil towards each other. It’s a sad but necessary awakening to the reality of human nature. Terrorism’s greatest achievement was in eroding people’s hope that humans are innately good at heart. I’m not sure if the world has turned cynical and suspicious of each other after 9/11, but surely we have lost some goodness somehow. It will never be the same again.
When we say #NeverForget, don’t ever forget the horror of the day, don’t forget the strength people have shown, don’t forget the people who sacrificed their lives for others, don’t forget the people who died for nothing.. but also, don’t forget that evil lies in the hearts of some people.. And vow that such tragedy should never happen again. Even if we cannot root that evil out of others, let us not fall victim to that darkness. We owe the victims of 9/11 that much.