nmah241.xml

nmah241.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-19

I awoke at about 6:30Am PST in San Diego, California. I reached for the remote to turn on the Today Show and listen to the news. This was routine for me. The first image on the TV screen was the first tower to be hit in flames and shrouded in smoke. My first reaction was that it was a disaster movie and I had the wrong channel so I tried switching the channel only to discover that it was not a movie but real life and death unfolding before my eyes. From that moment on, I could not relax and my full attention was on the reports and news casts. This continued for more than a week. Gradually, I pulled myself away from the coverage as I could take no more. I couldn't help but think that if it had influenced my life so much, how much more it must have influenced those more directly involved at and with ground zero.

I cannot escape the event and never will. For the first time in my life, I realized no one is safe in today's world. Not a single person can escape the insane behavior of the relative few in this life who respect no one but themselves, hear no one speaking but themselves and serve no one but themselves. Such beings serve themselves and cover their cowardliness and evil under some self concocted shroud of holy divine guidance and purpose. Misguiding and misguided they attack diversity out of ignorance and embrace only behavior narrowly specified by dogma and decree which more often that not is equally as misinterpreted as they are misguided.

Diversity and differences need to be approached with knowledge rather than through ignorance with prejudice. It is truly from the differences among and between peoples that we can and do learn and because of our similarities that we can be and often are ignorant and uninformed. Every person has it in their power to be informed and mitigate the inevitable ignorance and experiences of life that shape our misguided prejudices.

So, while I will always embrace my culture and my heritage and seek comfort in the ways of life that I have been taught and that are familiar to me, I will endeavor to understand the cultures, ways and heritage of others who seek comfort in places and ways different from my own. To live my life in anyway other than this but feeds the misguided reasoning of the type that led to September 11 and violence throughout the ages. As the saying goes, "Unless you are a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem."

I know now that we are given this life but to enjoy, cherish and honor all other life. Our purpose is to teach of and to learn from our differences and to do so from the foundation of our similarities rather than the fears of our differences. I will never again judge another without first trying to understand the why of who they are, what they say, how they dress, how they act or how they speak. I will seek to learn and to understand the differences of lives unlike my own with practices and beliefs foreign to mine. I will not be threatened by differences but learn from them so that I might I might draw conclusions from knowledge rather than fear or ignorance. Perhaps through such behavior, the world can be just a little bit better when I leave it than when I came into it.

Yes, I did fly the flag until and through the 4th of July, 2002. My feelings about the flag have not changed. It is a symbol of my heritage, my country and my freedom. It is not a symbol of the single good or greatness of or in this world. As such, I believe in showing support for our military and respect for all citizens of our nation and will continue to fly the flag as a symbol of my love for these things. However, let there be no mistake, flying any flag of any country with the thought that we are the greatest and we are always right, is as dangerous and fanatical as the beings who perpetrated 9-11. Flying any flag as a symbol of surperiority will surely lead to much suffering and history is filled with pages of the horror such fanatical behavior has reaped.