Sunday Meditation #5: On Unfathomable Violence

It crept up on me, this tenth anniversary of the day that changed the world.  Ten years gone since the twin towers fell, and we all felt as if we would never be safe again.  I made no plans to commemorate the events, as even memorials however well-intentioned will always carry the taint of the things that made memorials necessary in the first place.  A lot has been said since September 11, 2001 and a lot of people have been hurt or killed in pursuit of trying to make things right.  All of this, the totality of the thread that binds together horrendous evil and spectacular good, saddens me.

I will not, cannot, let it rule my life. It will not do to forget what happened, of course, but I can no longer live my life under a cloud or in fear.  Such a state of affairs would be a repudiation of all that we claim to stand for, that the terrorists so misguidedly thought they could dissuade us from practicing: the freedom to pursue our lives navigated by the pole star of our conscience, free from tyranny and fear.

This thread has been spun by the hearts of humans, filled with good and evil, to create a fabric we cannot unravel.  This, because we are human beings.  But because I am a human being I will no longer spend this day wallowing in fear and sadness.  I hope that my morning of sipping tea and quiet meditation on the notion of being human serves as a rejection of evil and hate in the world.  Because I no longer hate the terrorists.  I do not subscribe, and never will subscribe, to their warped notions of what this world should be.  It is those ideas I would hate, if I could find the energy to continue hating.

I will not hate them, any longer, because hating them only validates their view of us.  But hate is what they brought.  Hate is the food they wished us to swallow. I, for one, have had my fill of hate.

I am a hungry man, to be sure, but it is love upon which I must feed.