I’ve written something about September 11, 2001, every year that I’ve had a blog. But now after 13 years, I’m not sure what to say. Indeed, what more can be said? It’s not that the tragedy of the day means nothing to me, because it certainly does. I remember what I did that day quite vividly. The world itself drastically, and so did my little corner of it. I was a child when the Cold War ended. Then at the end of my relatively carefree adolescence did a new enemy—extremist Islam—rear its ugly head. To go any further than those statements would mean getting extremely political, and I’d rather not talk about politics on this solemn day. The events of that day and what has happened since have already been over-politicized, and I refuse to do the same.

The truth is I don’t know what else to say about today that I haven’t already. Yet I feel I must say something so that I don’t forget that day. It would dishonor the lives of the people murdered in those attacks, both the victims and the heroes. They deserve better than to be relegated to a page in a history book. I visited New York City a few years after the attacks. I saw massive holes where the World Trade Center once stood. I visited Washington, D.C. just a month after the attacks and saw the Pentagon with its huge breach. I imagined what it was would’ve been like to see a low-flying plane crash into the building. In many ways, those imaginings still seem more like a movie than real life.

We shouldn’t just September 11, 2001, for the lives that were lost, but for the people we were that day and the months that followed. That is my prayer. It’s times like those when we’re at our best. Complacency is the enemy of greatness.

Perhaps even I have been infected. The fact that I don’t know what more I could say 13 years later might be a sign I myself have become complacent. I truly hope that isn’t true and that it never becomes true.

And may it never be true of you.

Never forget September 11.

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