It's been two weeks.
And by looking around, it's difficult to see that we already live in a different world. On the surface, at least, nothing has changed. There are still homework and assignments, papers and projects, hookups and relationships, parties and social events.
To overuse a clichZ
Yet despite an eventual return to everyday life, one thing will be different. As a generation, we've been marked.
In their song "Civil War," the rock band Guns N' Roses sang "So I never fell for Vietnam/ We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all/ That you can't trust freedom when it's not in your hands/ When everybody's fightin' for their promised land."
These lyrics always sounded strange to me. Even though I knew what the song was about and I knew what the writer meant to convey, I felt like I somehow could not relate. After all, the Vietnam War is a historical event to me--I only know of it through books, movies and stories.
And so I've always wondered whether those of us born after 1970 would ever have such a unifying place marker to enforce our generational identity. Our grandparents have Pearl Harbor and the war that came after it. Our parents have the Vietnam War and the tumultuous years that accompanied it. Until two weeks ago, we were the generation who had no events of such enormity. We had a multitude of important but admittedly less dramatic issues: the war on drugs, school shootings and the spread of HIV..., but no over-arching event to unify us all.
Well, I no longer have to wonder. We now have a place marker to bind us as a generation--we have the New York skyline and the horrifying images that go with it.
But the effect of all this goes beyond simply knowing where you were on Sept. 11th. And it's not so much that the date will live in infamy either. It's the fact that you'll think about "9-11-01" every time you board a plane, every time you see the New York skyline on TV, every time you have to come to the airport hours before your flight.
Perhaps, years from now, somewhere in the back of your mind when you decide to settle down and start a family you'll wonder whether the city of your choice could be a target of another attack. As unlikely as it might seem, if all other things remain equal, you might choose to live in Charlotte over New York or Phoenix instead of Los Angeles.
I'm not saying that we'll all live in fear of another 767 slamming into a skyscraper or that we'll automatically panic if we see suspicious-looking trucks parked in the middle of downtown. But the fact that we have witnessed an unseen and unknown enemy deliver slashing blows to our national landmarks has burst our bubble of security.
We have all known that what took place two weeks ago could happen any day. One could even say that there were previews of what's coming--the earlier World Trade Center bombing, Oklahoma City, Centennial ParkÉ but now we know for sure that it does happen.
What you do with this newfound knowledge is, of course, up to you. You may decide to donate to the Red Cross on a monthly basis. You may decide to write your congressman and voice your concern that the U.S. military interventions are starting to cost the country dearly. You may decide to continue with your life as if nothing ever happened and place your trust in the government's ability to protect you.
But regardless of how you interpret this event, some things will remain forever--a memory, for example.
And not just the memory of a collapsing building and an eerily incomplete New York skyline--a memory of a nation that healed in a day. Years from now, I sincerely hope we'll remind each other of the way special interests, partisan agendas and irreconcilable differences disappeared when our way of life came under fire. As disparate and confused as this bouillabaisse of a nation might have seemed two weeks ago, I am comforted by the fact that our bonds as Americans are still there.
And even if that's the only silver lining to be found on this dark cloud, it's still a mighty good one.
Marko Djuranovic is a Trinity senior and former health and science editor of The Chronicle.
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