I, like many of you, was only in elementary school when 9/11 happened.
I can remember almost every detail: where I was, who else was or wasn't there and the surreal blue sky. I remember staying up late flipping around news channels trying to comprehend what had happened and why.
It's been 10 years, and the world is a different place.
During the past decade I've noticed a trend in national attention toward 9/11.
As can be expected in the digital age of 24-hour news coverage, and in the face of other disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the recent outbreak of tornados, Americans have become numb.
We've seen the towers collapse, the gaping hole in the Pentagon and the smoldering field in Shanksville, Penn., so many times on the Internet and television that we can't feel the same emotions as we did the first time we saw it.
Sept. 11 was certainly a time when Americans rallied together, but in 10 year's time we've been driven apart by a financial crisis, a change in the Oval Office and the question of whom exactly we can call "American."
On 9/11 all those lines were erased. Almost 3,000 people, including Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, gays, lesbians, straight people, black people, white people, Latinos, illegal and legal immigrants, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, entire companies of firefighters and more than 100 other first responders didn't get to go home.
What insult to injury would it be to those families still grieving for us as a nation to parade their pain around as a cause for anything other than peace?
On Sept. 11, 2011, I'm asking for people to remember exactly where they were and exactly how they felt.
Concentrate on it harder than you ever have. Whatever you feel about this country, put it aside for the day and remember the tragedy for what it was: a loss of innocent life.
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