h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today was a beautiful day. The sky was a brilliant blue, it was warm and sunny, and I was driving to school with the car window down. I shuddered and thought: "It feels just like September 11th did." What a sad testimony ... to never again be able to enjoy a late summer day without looking toward the sky with a heavy heart. I mentioned it to a friend who looked at me with wide eyes and said "I thought the same thing before!"

I've been reliving a lot of the memories since my work is with the news, and we've been preparing many things for the anniversary of 9/11. I still look upon it all with a feeling of disbelief, and every time I see the NYC skyline, I am jolted by the fact that the WTC is no longer there.

I spent 9/11 at work, where we were saturated with the news all day ... and for days and days afterwards. When people started making posters of missing loved ones, and posting them around the City, our photographers began taking photos of them. I started collecting them to put online in the hopes of reuniting loved ones. That was the idea in the beginning. When hopes of recovery faded, these photos turned into a testament of those lost. They were no longer numbers, but faces. Real people. People kept sending photos into the paper to tell the stories of the lost. These were the pictures they had of their lost loved ones ... the ones from the weddings, christenings, birthday parties, vacations. I literally spent months formatting these pictures, looking into the smiling eyes of the dead.

I have friends who lost loved ones. My sister lost a friend. Perhaps because I live in a suburb of NYC, the attacks of 9/11 are never far from my consciousness. I'm always reminded of the lives lost, of the dreams shattered, of the sense of safety forever lost.

I didn't understand it then. I understand it less now.

Perhaps one of the things the attacks have done is awakened in me a greater sense of sympathy for tragedies around the world. I had sympathy before, but it's easy to see just "numbers" and not the real people involved. We hear and see so much in our media-saturated world. It's easy to become desensitized. I now feel more keenly every suicide bomber, every car bomb, every senseless act of violence that is perpetrated on the innocent.

And I still don't understand.