The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is coming up and I have been reflecting on the state of everything lately. 20 years ago, it felt as if the world, while not in a better place, was actually okay for a moment. Sure, there was still racism, poverty and the climate was already going to hell, but for the most part there wasn't a sense of fear and doom.
Then, 9/11 happened. I was in class when I first heard about the planes hitting the Twin Towers. I was stunned. Then, my friends and classmates started immediately talking about war and retaliation. I became horrified. War, to me, was something that happened in the past, that I read in history textbooks. To be in a generation that experienced something like that was unfathomable to me at the time. Then it happened, and everything went downhill from there.
Now, as an adult who has lived in America through 2 wars, 2 recessions, several political movements, multiple mass shootings and a global pandemic, I feel that the world that we all used to have may not only never come back, but probably never even existed in the first place. The country and the world has changed too much and become too divided.
Thoughts? How do you feel 20 years later?