On this anniversary, in the face of the upcoming election, I ask all of us to remember how important unity is, how important fighting for each other is–rather than against. It isn’t that we can’t argue or partake in educated–or, at the very least, adult–conversation about the ideas, the morals, the values that drive us. It takes being respectful, mindful of the fact that not everyone will think like us. This doesn’t mean we can’t come together, find a common goal, and work together to achieve it–while still maintaining our own opinions, our own moral code, our own idea of ethics.
Shake the hand of an American you don’t know today. Thank your chosen deity for giving you another day and choose to appreciate it by showing gratitude to someone else. Give something to someone else–even when you’re feeling your own sense of lack. Put someone else’s perspective ahead of your own, just for a second, and you’ll see the world in a whole new light–especially when you get a smile from the person you boosted today.
When so much of the world is centered on segregating us, breaking us down along ideological, moral, or any other check-boxes, think about what makes (or made) us all the same today–we were attacked for the things that we, as Americans, hold sacred: freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and a never-ending drive for equality among all people–even when all those above us can do is continually show us how “different” they think we are.
The destruction of this day should stand as a lasting reminder of what can happen when we choose to see ideologies before the people who hold them. We are all people, and we all feel the loss of those who suffered at the hands of fear and violence. Let us cooperate, let us compromise, let us try diplomacy, so that no more innocent lives–on either side of the fight–are lost.
collected. 