Let the Wounds Heal

I will not join you as you wallow in the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. I will not watch the countless specials, read the retrospectives, nor indulge in any empty, symbolic gestures on the Internet. I will not allow myself to be swept up in the great, emotional current over the hurt done to me and my country. I will not howl my hurt until the noise of my howling joins with the howls of others until the sound of our collective pain drowns out all other human voices. I will not pat myself on the back because "we" liberated Afghanistan. I will not pump my fist because "we" got Osama bin Laden.

I will remember, silently, and mourn. I will mourn for our losses: for the Americans who have died prosecuting the "War on Terror," for the civilians caught in the middle, for the innocence that died on that day, for the fortitude that might have kept us from meekly submitting to the will of our leaders, for the way we are still cowed whenever the event is brandished in support of some new iniquity. I will mourn those killed that day, but not because they died (I did that when it happened). I will mourn them for the world we have created in their names.

It is not a better world, on balance. We are not a better people. Challenged by history to become larger, to extend our vision beyond ourselves, we instead became smaller. We could not see past our own hurt and, blinded by the pain, we lashed out at others and, indeed, set upon ourselves. We paraded our wounds and used them to excuse the inexcusable.

If you want a wound to heal, you bandage it, keep it clean, medicate it. Afterward, if the wound is severe enough, it leaves a scar that fades over time, a reminder of the hurt tougher than the undamaged tissue around it, an emblem of the healing. It will not heal if you constantly rip off the dressing, expose it to air, and poke at it to remind yourself of the pain. Picking at your wounds, and inflicting new ones on yourself, is the very definition of masochism. Yet we will do this tomorrow, and consider it part of the healing process.

Of course it was a horrible day and of course, though it is almost a cliche, the world changed. But as we mourn our losses we should not only consider what was ripped from us but also what, more tragically, we gave away willingly.