I'm not generally one to think about the past or to focus on what happened. We all have our story and all of us who are old enough remember where we were and what we were doing.
Those of us who lived a significant portion of our lives before that day remember how life in the US was before as compared to after, and yet many of us might be hard-pressed to provide meaningful, concrete examples of the differences.
I was discussing it with a couple kids who work at the restaurant and who are too young to remember anything of consequence before the attack and I found myself struggling to offer anything useful. I made mention of the perpetual war and the inevitable march toward less privacy and fewer freedoms but I knew that wasn't really the thing for me. I believe those things were coming anyway.
This morning on the way to the restaurant, I was listening to an interview with the mother of Mark Bingham - one of the passengers on the flight that went down in Pennsylvania - and as I listened, I found myself starting to choke up with a feeling I had not experienced in quite a long time but which felt familiar to me like I had last felt it yesterday.
On the day of the attack, I was working in a university software development lab in Porto Alegre, Brasil. That morning I walked to a cafe and watched the towers fall on live TV. Later that morning I found myself in an argument with college students (about the same age as many of my current employees) who asserted that the arrogance of the US was a reasonable justification for the attack and that we deserved the fate which had befallen us.
The conversation was ludicrous - not only because of the content and the timing but also because these very students were making 4 times as much money as their professional parents were due to a program they were participating in with an American company. I was outraged, and while I did not have hire/fire authority, I told them to leave immediately if that's how they felt.
That night, and for months after, I could not sleep without the lights on and without the TV tuned to CNN. I didn't watch action movies for at least a year. There was a distinct moment driving to work one morning in which I was overcome by an almost overwhelming need to get off the road and start driving out of town. I had been stuck in traffic on the bridge over the river and I had what felt like a premonition. I was consumed with an almost visceral feeling that a large fireball was consuming the city skyline next to me. I have since come to believe I was having the only bonafide anxiety attack of my life - before or since.
And therein lies the core of what is different now from before. This morning's feeling was raw. I wanted out of the car. I didn't want to hear what the mother was saying. I didn't want to feel the sadness and the anger and... the fear.
The US, arrogant or not, was not afraid before and we are now. Many will bluster and say it isn't true, but I'm willing to bet that many, if not most adults my age would (if they were able and willing to be completely honest) admit a similar feeling overtakes them sometimes. I bet many, if not most, would be able to tie it back to this day 14 years ago when our country was wounded in a way that is not really healing. The spear used on September 11, 2001 was coated in a slow-moving poison that has traveled far deeper into our veins than we'd care to believe and I'm fearful the patient will have already died before we even know it if we don't act quickly to reverse the effects.