Sixteen years ago I was on maternity leave with my youngest daughter. I spent my days breastfeeding… at least so it seems in a retrospective. My daughter was the kind of baby that you cannot really feed enough, so I found myself watching all the available soap operas… There was however one afternoon (…but it was MORNING in the USA…) that was not at all like the rest. In Sweden where I live, like in most other countries, we have the tradition of ”breaking news” if something extraordinary happens. I remember the 9th of September 2001 exactly like that. I was actually watching an extra news alert with the footage of the first Tower of WTC burning when there, right then, the second tower was hit. The Swedish News reporter commented this and I remember I felt strangely aware of that particular moment, as a ”NOW” to remember forever… A truly moment of MINDFULNESS.
My first reaction after a short while, was to write to my friend in NJ. At the time he worked as a teacher in a school south of Philly. I wrote ”Are you safe?” and he pretty much replied ”Yes. Why do you ask?” and as I remember it, he and the rest of the staff in that school did NOT know from the start what had happened in NYC, but I did, 8000 km away… That was the start of a surreal experience of watching a part of our history from my livingroom. In fact, it all happened then and there in front of me and it was horrific. I remember thinking of the future then and now I think of all the things that have happened AFTER that date. There are wars and conflicts all over the globe. Terror and meaningless violence has become a part of our time, no matter what we think. It makes me sad that so many people worldwide suffer from conflicts or become the victims of terror acts. I think the only way to change is within ourselves. Worldwide peace may not come during my lifetime, but I hope for a more generous era soon to come. It is about time we give peace a chance.
From a teacher's point of view, some is old and some is new! 
As that teacher as mentioned, I was angry at my administration for keeping us in the dark. We did not have smart phones then, so it was hard to get info. Our classroom TVs did not get information; they were only for showing videos. Parents were pulling their children from school. It wasn’t until my lunch, well after 1300 (5 hours after the attacks) that I could see what was going on via our school library’s TV. Yes, Asa, that was the end of our innocence as a country, as a culture, as a world community. The wrong people were targeted, everyone passed blame, and too many innocent lives were lost. It is our generation’s Pearl Harbor.
GillaGillad av 1 person
I think your comparison with Pearl Harbor is very interesting. Maybe other cultures worldwide all have their own ”Pearl Harbor’s”, too? For Sweden, I would say when our Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered is a defying moment. To me it’s clear that our society changed over a night from then on.
GillaGilla