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Wednesday night
Sep. 12th, 2002 01:08 amI didn't want to watch television today. The news channels aren't really memorializing, they're commercializing. I wasn't even tempted to watch the names being read at Ground Zero, knowing fully well how emotional it would leave me. I continued with my day, unaffected.
But.
As the day settled into afternoon and I scrubbed diligently at the neglected shower doors.. I began to feel differently. Cleaning the bathroom, while necessary, isn't the most enlightened of ways to spend the anniversary of the saddest days in recent American history. Memorials being held all over the world, and I didn't even light a candle, though I next cleaned the storage room. I was determined not to become weepy and upset. Although I know people, or people who know people, who lost loved ones last year, I did not. It was a tremendous blow to our country, to our sense of security, to our citizens.. but it thankfully did not affect my personal life.
And ultimately, that's exactly why I gave in and picked up the remote in late afternoon, knowing full well that it would make me cry. It was the closing moments of Oprah that brought the tears. Names and faces of mothers who will never return to their children. Smiling faces, laughing faces.. faces which I knew--and the person taking the picture did not--would not smile or laugh again. Their families didn't have the option of turning off their pain today. Who am I to have that choice?
I'll end this with one of my favorite quotes, and an unshed tear for those who cannot weep. We may continue living, but we will not forget.
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
-Franz Kafka
But.
As the day settled into afternoon and I scrubbed diligently at the neglected shower doors.. I began to feel differently. Cleaning the bathroom, while necessary, isn't the most enlightened of ways to spend the anniversary of the saddest days in recent American history. Memorials being held all over the world, and I didn't even light a candle, though I next cleaned the storage room. I was determined not to become weepy and upset. Although I know people, or people who know people, who lost loved ones last year, I did not. It was a tremendous blow to our country, to our sense of security, to our citizens.. but it thankfully did not affect my personal life.
And ultimately, that's exactly why I gave in and picked up the remote in late afternoon, knowing full well that it would make me cry. It was the closing moments of Oprah that brought the tears. Names and faces of mothers who will never return to their children. Smiling faces, laughing faces.. faces which I knew--and the person taking the picture did not--would not smile or laugh again. Their families didn't have the option of turning off their pain today. Who am I to have that choice?
I'll end this with one of my favorite quotes, and an unshed tear for those who cannot weep. We may continue living, but we will not forget.
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
-Franz Kafka
