Live every day to the fullest.
In other words: eat more Flourless Chocolate-Chip Cookies.
I struggled with today’s post.
Mostly, I struggled in deciding whether or not to publish any post today. Today: September 11th.
I’d completely forgotten until last night. My initial reaction was to unschedule the recipe post I’d written (ironically enough, for New York-style Cheesecake) and take a day off from blogging, in honor of the victims of 9/11. It seemed wrong and superficial to talk about desserts on the anniversary of a day so many innocent people lost their lives.
However, I’m not sure the victims of September 11th would want that. I think they would want us to honor their memories by celebrating life; by not taking a single moment—or a single person in our lives—for granted. Yes, it’s cliché to say, “Don’t take anything in your life for granted.” But just stop for a second and really think about the meaning behind the cliché. Think about aspects of your life that you do take for granted.
Personally, I can always use a reminder to put the little things—a failed recipe, a bad hair day, even a slow internet connection—in perspective. Likewise with people: instead of getting annoyed at a friend’s bad habit that drives me crazy, I should be grateful the friend is in my life and is therefore able to annoy me.
Also, as horrible as September 11th was, we need to remember that atrocities are still taking place every single day around the world. It’s easy to sit back and pretend we’re being patriotic by waving our American flags and spouting out phrases like: “I’m proud to be an American” and “Support our troops!” But what would really show patriotism would be to get out there and actually do something, whether it be volunteering at a food pantry, writing letters to the brave men and women fighting overseas, etc.
I was so active in high school—visiting nursing homes, making comfort pillows for a local hospital, going to the animal shelter, coordinating service projects through my church… I’m embarrassed to admit that as college work became more time-consuming, I cut back on these other activities and went from helping so many causes to helping very few. I really need to get back into it. Sitting home and pretending to be a good person helps no one.
Question of the Day:
Do you remember where you were on September 11th?
I was in high school, and when my math teacher told us a plane had hit the World Trade Center, I thought he was making a really bad joke. And then some kid did play a really bad joke—he called in a bomb threat to our school, so we spent the rest of the day huddled together in the football stadium. We were hot (It was over 100 degrees), hungry (Our lunches were left in the evacuated building) and scared, with no idea what was going on. Kids didn’t have iphones back then.
But when I got home, I obviously learned that, as bad as my day was, it paled in comparison to the day of so many others.
I’m glad you decided to post. It’s important to talk about it and remember. What the families and victims would want is remembrance, celebration of life, and just for people to not forget. I’ll be going on a long hike today with friends… celebrating just being alive, having friends to enjoy a day with, and having a capable body to do so much with!
What a wonderful post,Katie! I also think it was right to write it as it honours all the victims of the tragedy from 2001…
I was eight years old at that time and I remeber me sitting in the kitchen with my sister while we waited for our mom to fix our banana sandwiches… We were talking about something funny when suddenly the phone rang. It was my aunt who told my mom to immediately switch on the TV as there were reports broadcasted on every single program… Of course,my sister and I didn’t know what had happened because we couldn’t hear what my aunt was saying,so we were very alarmed when mom ran out of the kitchen and switched on the TV – but as we saw the pictures,we directly understood…
Wow,I just notice how detailed I remember that day!
I was 6 years old when 9/11 happened. I have no memory of 9/11 except that my aunt was thankful that it didn’t hit our area. I asked my mom what we were doing on 9/11 and she said that my dad told us to watch the news on what happened.
I was eleven, it was still early and I was just waking up to get ready for school. We had a tv but never really used it but the night before my mom couldn’t sleep at all and she flipped on the news in the morning for a change. Just before the coverage on the towers my dad called, super early for him, he said he got a weird feeling andbwas just checking in on us ( my parents are separated) then right then the news showed what just happened and both my parents had it on tv while on the phone. I still went to school, in CA, and remember many of the parents and teachers just talking and crying all day and many of us kids didn’t really understand the whole effect. Thenks for such a nuc post today 🙂 celebrate life!
I’m really glad to have read your post and seen that I’m not the only one that feels that we need to focus on other things, too. I tried to write a bit about it yesterday but I think I came off a little too strongly, so today I posted a memorial for one of the victims. Today should be about the people, not the fact that we were attacked or that we have a hole in our skyline. We should be thinking about the people, and taking it a step further and doing something to help others. I’m checking out those Africards right now. Thanks for sharing them!
Amazing post, Katie! I love the part about being thankful that you HAVE people in your life to annoy you.
I was in second grade when the attacks happened, and I remember vividly watching the towers fall in my music class. My teacher at the time has been my teacher and a great inspiration for me for 13 years now, and I remember how upset she was, and she did a wonderful job explaining to 7 and 8 year old children the severity of the attacks without scaring us.
I think you were right to post this. Of course it is important to pause and remember, but it is also important to get on with life, like you say.
I was at uni 10 years ago (still on summer break), and I had gone to the cinema. We saw the footage on a TV screen in a shop in the shopping centre, and thought it was a film. Then our cinema got evacuated and we went home and realised that what we saw was actually real.
Thanks Katie for this post. I remember that day quite well. The sky was so blue that morning. I was a senior in high school at the time and sitting in biology class. The assistant principal came over the PA system and asked that any girl (it was an all girls’ school) who had family working in the WTC or in lower Manhattan come to the chapel. Living just outside of NYC, there was a real possibility that someone’s parents could have been there (thankfully, that was not the case, though other family members were).
Throughout the rest of the day, the teachers wouldn’t tell us much of anything, but some parents came to pick up their daughters early and even some of the school buses came early. The drive home (for me usually about 90 minutes) was really short because there was no one on the roads. It was so eerie.
I was only in 2nd grade when 9/11 happened and I’d gotten up for school like normal, turned on the tv and saw it played over and over again on the news channel. I had no idea what the World Trade Center was and I didn’t understand what was happening so I got ready for school like it was any other day, watching Nick Jr and eating fruit loops. It was only after school that I found out what happened. Teachers were apparently told not to talk about it during school because it would upset the kids.
It is important to remember and honour, but also to keep going with life.
I was in 6th grade (I think…), I came home on my lunch hour (I’m 6 hours ahead of time here in the Netherlands, so it was in the afternoon here that it happened).
I was only 8 years old but I still remember so well being absolutely consumed by all the images on tv. It was probably one of the first times I watched the news so intensly for a few weeks in a row.
I understood back then what it was, an act of terrorism, and that it was terrible. But I did not see what it would do in the long term.
Now, as I’m older, I find it impossible to watch the documentaries without crying, I find myself getting sick to my stomach and scared seeing pictures of it, but somehow, whenever I think of it, it makes me think how lucky I am with my life.