Amen, Mr. Wise, Amen. "... life is precious and fleeting, and not promised us for even one more day"

[Taverner]

Oh and one more thing: we must remember to hug our children tight, and each other. Because life is precious, and fleeting, and not promised us for even one more day. And that is something we should have learned from 9/11: that what we take for granted can be snuffed in an instant, and that all the time we waste in anger, in acrimony, in seething hatred for the dreaded other, is time we are not spending holding, and caring for, and loving those closest to us.

Agreed

“Why Can’t They Just Say Stop It?” Reflections on Terror and the Cycle of Indifference

By Tim Wise

I knew it was a conversation that at some point I would have to indulge; and last night, amid commemorative news coverage of the events of September 11, 2001, it became apparent that the time had come.

Although I had previously discussed the events of that day and the aftermath of those events with our ten-year old (who was only 10 weeks of age when the attacks took place), Rachel, who is 8, had previously been far more oblivious, paying little attention to my prior conversations with Ashton about the subject, or showing little interest if she had been.

But last night, as she watched footage of United Airlines flight 175 violently piercing the South Tower of the World Trade Center (something I, like so many others, had watched live at the time), her interest, and of course fear, was piqued. Though she was trying hard to concentrate on some cute little game on her iTouch, involving a puppy dog of some sort, I would catch her looking up at the television screen from time to time, obviously disturbed by the images she was seeing.

Then came the inevitable questions, and I realized that this would be our youngest daughter’s first real lesson in the global geopolitics of violence.

“Why did someone want to knock down those buildings? Were they important?” Rachel asked.

(snip)


http://www.timwise.org/2011/09/why-cant-they-just-say-stop-it-reflections-on-terror-and-the-cycle-of-indifference/#more-860