Growing Up Under 9/11; A Pleasanton Student's Perspective

I was five years old when September 11th happened, and I barely remember it.  

The few memories that I've managed to hold onto are vague and so unreliable that I don't even consider my experience to be firsthand. 

It's pretty clear that America today has been shaped by 9/11; despite this, I'm strangely disconnected from it all.  It's not that I don't care or that I've sheltered myself from it. Rather, it's that I'm old enough to be living in a post 9/11 world, but young enough to view the event as far off, even almost historical.

Throughout the course of my life, I've talked to friends about it. Their reactions have varied.  What I've noticed in people my age, however, is that we have a desire to understand what happened.  For example, in the sixth grade my best friend and I would sit for hours watching 9/11 footage on his computer.  

On the one hand, it was horrifying, but on the other hand, we felt compelled to.  

We were searching for some sort of reason, some explanation, some truth about what had happened.

As I grew older, I started to examine not only what had happened, but also how people responded to it. What I've gathered is that tragedies like this bring out both the best and the worst of people. Some responses to 9/11 are hateful and hypocritical, but the overwhelming majority are loving, compassionate, and sympathetic.

The truth I was searching for lies within the latter. There was nothing good about 9/11. The loving responses it generated, however, are reminders of the good in the world. They're reminders of the fact that there will always be good in the world, no matter how evil people get.