September 11: In Retrospect

I have been thinking a lot about September 11, 2001. I think probably the entire nation has been today.

I wanted to post something on here about that day...but I didn't know what I really wanted to say. However, as I posted on facebook, my thoughts somehow spilled out on the screen and what I felt I saw coming from my own voice. This is what I posted:

It doesn't seem like it has been ten years. It is strange how quickly one can fall into a new "normal". I remember the days before the word "terrorist" was even in my vocabulary, really. Now, you hear that word almost daily on the news, and use it often, too. The funny thing is, on 9/11, they thought they were instilling fear in us. They thought it was an act of terrorism. But really, America fought in every way possible to keep it from filling us with terror, and we have succeeded! I am not "afraid". They thought they would make us live in fear. Instead, we live resolute. We stand together as a nation. We remember those who died, not those who killed. We have made the fight against TERROR real, not some abstract, frightening thing.

That really sums up what I think about that day ten years ago. I was afraid that day. But I saw others' courage. I saw the other's strength. I saw their patriotism. I listened in the following days to the news reports, and what people older and wiser than I, who had lived through war, had lived through attacks on American soil in Hawaii, had to say. I found courage in their words. I found strength in their strength. I found confidence in their experience and wisdom.

That day, terrorists killed innocent people. They defiled the purity of our soil. They invaded our free land. But they did not fulfil their purpose: They did not bring terror to our courageous hearts.