9-11-20

It’s impossible to forget 9-11-01.

Somewhat conveniently timed, I recently found this memorial drawing I made in high school (probably from 2001) while going through some old notebooks. I wasn’t going to post this today, but I felt like it could make up for the words I’ve always struggled to find every year. It’s not really about the art; it’s about the feeling. The emotions that will live in me forever. The infinite love and sadness I feel for anyone directly affected by the tragedy. The confusion over how an event like this could have taken place in real life. On September 11th 2001 I discovered the harsh truth about the magnitude of hate that existed in the world we live in. I also learned a new meaning of the words unity and compassion.

On September 11th 2001 I didn’t really understand left vs. right or blue vs. red. I was honestly just trying to understand the value of X and the concept of polynomial functions. Everything shifted that day and suddenly it was no longer about me. It was about US. I always thought; maybe if I actually tried harder to figure out these math equations I could somehow successfully travel through time and erase the events of 9-11….but nah. Nothing can erase that day.

Here we are, 19 years later, in the middle of a pandemic in 2020. Tragedy and panic (in a different form) has occupied our world once again, and we are more divided than ever.

The given equation: Humanity + x = peace ✌🏻

So what is the value of x? I used to think it was love or kindness, but I think the answer is understanding. Understanding that we are not all the same, yet we can coexist despite our differences in lifestyle and opinion. I hate that we need 9-11 to remind us of the importance of unity, but here it is once again, and we’ll #neverforget