This piece has made it onto Pandora stations. It's no background music for me, sparking examination of how my society's psyche has dramatically changed in ten years.
When I was in high school, an English assignment included listing remarkable events that occurred the day one was born. I had nothing to report. Through adolescence I didn't imagine anything massively traumatic would happen to my peers, family, or me in a lifetime.
September 11th was, however regrettably, part of my cohort's coming of age. Reports from battlefronts and vets in Iraq and Afghanistan made real to me wartime casualties as a physical and collective psychological threat. Living in San Francisco I became accustomed to the inevitability of mass destruction through natural earthquake and measures we must take as a civilization to reduce those risks. I focused more and more on invisible and silent threats of mass deaths from hate violence, suicide, and neglected social services.
Deliberate violence may be taking fewer lives in the current era, and that's worthy of celebration. How can we take that spirit forward to do better to provide one another the resources we need for collective safety, health, and well-being?
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