That Tuesday looked more
like a nuclear winter than the normal hustle and bustle we’re
supposed to see in New York.
Hundreds of miles removed, safe on our mountaintop campus, we
watched in horror as the scenes were replayed throughout the day.
Never had our generation witnessed such an attack on our home
soil.
America’s eyes were open and we were at the realization that
the freedom we have all taken for granted came at a price few
of us were willing to pay.
Our buildings were destroyed, our sense of safety yanked out from
under us. But we were still Americans and our ideals were not
as easily torn down.
But something did change. Those eyes that once saw American soil
as invincible, now saw America for what it really was: open and
susceptible to the dangerous impulses of other peoples.
And what about college students? How did we respond?
Before 9-11, all the world was our stage. What were the limits
to our opportunities, and our feelings that our generation was
the best yet and one day we would be leading this country?
Suddenly, however, the world we expected to jump into after graduation
was very different. What would happen next? What would be the
new look and feel of our country when this disaster was finally
over?
The situation was a double-edged sword. As Americans, we couldn’t
live our lives in fear; we had to move on and now approach a very
different stage.
This new stage boasted failing job markets and a hesitation to
take risks, such as on spending money and still wet-behind-the-ears
college graduates.
But perhaps we might say we as college-aged youth reached an age
of maturity.
Baby-boomers lived through Vietnam and were strengthened in their
sense of the truth. We lived through 9-11 and came out of it with
our head up, wiping away the sleep from our eyes.
We moved on.
Many people believe something will happen again sometime soon,
but we must live our lives without fear until then because that
truly is the American way.
However, we’ve learned, or should have learned, that this
is dangerous.
We have stopped looking for answers and started again living our
daily lives, taking advantage of the freedom that we feel was
only interrupted for a short time.
But we as future leaders of the world cannot let this sleep come
over us again; we cannot forget that freedom and essentially the
life in our bodies can be taken away just as easily as they are
granted.
Like our parents who remember where they were when John F. Kennedy
was shot and our grandparents remember Pearl Harbor, we will always
remember that terrible day in U.S. history.
Just as life on the mountain has picked up momentum since that
day, so too have the streets of New York. |
