Diwundrin
Well-known Member
- Location
- Nth Coast NSW Australia
It's September 11 already here. While it's largely focused on how it changed America's psyche, it impacted far wider than that. I believe it changed the World.
On a personal level it changed my operating circuitry to the extent of changing my whole life. My view of life, and my way of dealing with it was an instant 180 degree turnaround.
The greatest epiphany I've ever experienced.
I was watching late night TV... Buffy from memory, when a news flash came on that a plane had ... you know how it goes. Thought, "drunk Cessna pilot" and slipped back into my TV brain fog.
Then the live feed started coming in.
I'd always thought 'dumbstruck' was only what ham actors did, but that was it. I sat there in disbelief. It was around 11pm, and at 3am I was still sitting there in the same state.
I'd been in to wake my mother, to explain what was happening, and trying to persuade her to watch history happening. But she thought I was crazy or something so I let her be. She was born in 1917 and had outlived Communism, born in the year of the Bolsheviks and had lived long enough to watch the USSR collapse on live TV. Plus she'd experienced all the Wars and woes that had happened in between so guess she'd had enough of history. She never did see that day the way I did.
That night all the things that were binding me to a way of life suddenly fell away as the trivia they really were.
The baggage I carried suddenly became crystal clear for what it truly was.
It was those papers! Those documents, those vital and career making and breaking pieces of paper which were blowing from the Twin Towers and were floating in the wind as litter.
Those pieces of paper that people worked on, and for. Those symbols of what their life's purpose had been.
Those bottom line symbols of their 'success'.
How many would have traded all of them, and all they meant, and their whole careers for a few more minutes with their family?
That was the night I realized that where I lived didn't matter, how I lived did. I stopped being patient. I started next day to organize to move and make some new memories. The old ones didn't matter any more. They were paper in the wind.
As I said, a massive epiphany, my entire personality changed that night as I had seen the World, and life, not as the solid reliable thing it had seemed, but as the fleeting moment it really is, and I adjusted accordingly.
It wasn't only the death and destruction that made the change in my circuitry. That was just another part of the horror of history.
It was the vision of those stupid pieces of paper, and what they symbolized, that switched something on in me and made me really ... for want of better word, aware.
It woke me up from dreams of how I thought things were, to see it all as it really is, and more importantly, what it's really worth.
So 9/11 means a lot to me, and while I share your sadness, I think I may also share your day of 'wakening' too.
On a personal level it changed my operating circuitry to the extent of changing my whole life. My view of life, and my way of dealing with it was an instant 180 degree turnaround.
The greatest epiphany I've ever experienced.
I was watching late night TV... Buffy from memory, when a news flash came on that a plane had ... you know how it goes. Thought, "drunk Cessna pilot" and slipped back into my TV brain fog.
Then the live feed started coming in.
I'd always thought 'dumbstruck' was only what ham actors did, but that was it. I sat there in disbelief. It was around 11pm, and at 3am I was still sitting there in the same state.
I'd been in to wake my mother, to explain what was happening, and trying to persuade her to watch history happening. But she thought I was crazy or something so I let her be. She was born in 1917 and had outlived Communism, born in the year of the Bolsheviks and had lived long enough to watch the USSR collapse on live TV. Plus she'd experienced all the Wars and woes that had happened in between so guess she'd had enough of history. She never did see that day the way I did.
That night all the things that were binding me to a way of life suddenly fell away as the trivia they really were.
The baggage I carried suddenly became crystal clear for what it truly was.
It was those papers! Those documents, those vital and career making and breaking pieces of paper which were blowing from the Twin Towers and were floating in the wind as litter.
Those pieces of paper that people worked on, and for. Those symbols of what their life's purpose had been.
Those bottom line symbols of their 'success'.
How many would have traded all of them, and all they meant, and their whole careers for a few more minutes with their family?
That was the night I realized that where I lived didn't matter, how I lived did. I stopped being patient. I started next day to organize to move and make some new memories. The old ones didn't matter any more. They were paper in the wind.
As I said, a massive epiphany, my entire personality changed that night as I had seen the World, and life, not as the solid reliable thing it had seemed, but as the fleeting moment it really is, and I adjusted accordingly.
It wasn't only the death and destruction that made the change in my circuitry. That was just another part of the horror of history.
It was the vision of those stupid pieces of paper, and what they symbolized, that switched something on in me and made me really ... for want of better word, aware.
It woke me up from dreams of how I thought things were, to see it all as it really is, and more importantly, what it's really worth.
So 9/11 means a lot to me, and while I share your sadness, I think I may also share your day of 'wakening' too.
