I was at lunch today with some folks from Westminster Presbyterian Church today and the topic of 9/11/01 came up.
One of the guys there is from New York and was upset at the lack of memorial-type events (televised or local) that happened this year.
“How can people just forget about something that had such a huge impact on our culture? And for those who were too young to remember 9/11, they need to know how things came to be the way they are.”
That’s a paraphrase, of course, but I hope you get the point. 9/11 affected him more than it did me, so I can’t say I was completely empathetic to how he felt about it, but I understand why it matters to him so much.
It’s kinda a lot like why the Vietnamese Association here in Charlotte still commemorates the fall of Saigon each year around April 30th. It’s an event that changed their lives (and affected much of the world). It’s also a big part of the reason why I was born and raised in the States.
I guess I can conclude at this point that history matters.
But to what extent? And how do you choose which events to hold on to and which to move on from?
[ image by dixie law ]