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"Take five minutes and think real hard.
Lives, hearts, minds and souls may depend on your very decision,
for in reality, you’ve got the power to affect all of those."
"Be
it talk, greet, smile, walk, ring, wave, hug, kiss, grin, laugh,
giggle or just plain give a nod of the head. Each day you have
a chance to make this world a better place."
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There
is not much left to say about September 11th, 2001. In truth, all that
has been expressed has been enough to cover such a horrifying event.
We’ve passed that year mark, that one year line that every single terrible
incident is relived again in pictures, sound and emotion. It happened
with Columbine here in Littleton, when we reached that one year since
we lost 13 lives in a hail of gunfire, hate and anger.
We also lost something else. I would call it our "innocence". Perhaps
it was that shield that protected us from dealing with the real problems
facing our world. For a brief moment, we lost those shields that had
been protecting us all these years. Our guard was dropped, our beating
hearts exposed to the storms of pain and destruction and for that instant,
we were all vulnerable. Each one of us lost that shield that day. Some
of us chose to leave the shield on the ground as it evaporated into
the summer air, vanishing from our vision.
While still other clung to the dust, refusing to believe that they had
lost that protecting from the real problems in the world. They stood
without that shield, as all of us did and dealt with the pain from losing
13 innocent lives. And then, after a time, shields were put back up.
But these were not the original shields; these were the shields of naivety,
of ignorance and of close-minded thought. They were something we built
to protect us from further pain, as we no longer wished to deal with
anything more that would bring those feelings back into our worlds.
We never wanted to face that again. Others of us gave up on the shield
and looked into the world to see where we could support the structure
that threatened to fall from the sky and destroy all that we knew. We
wanted to solve the problem here and now, while we still had time. Sadly,
there weren’t enough of us. Shooting after shooting in schools befell
us, the pain from our loss coming back to light at each news report
across our screens.
We were then blessed with a period of respite, of slight calm in the
world. Madness still prevailed in the world around us, but for most
of us, it didn’t affect us in any way that we could see, so it never
really mattered much past a word or two when it came on the news or
we read about it the newspaper. Life returned to normal, those shields,
now artificial, back in place once more. Our eyes focused dead ahead,
ignorant of the lives, the stories and the activities on our periphery.
Then it happened. Two towers destroyed by evil no man could begin to
fathom. Nearly three thousand people lost their lives in a morning as
four airliners exploded into fire and smoke, sending it screaming into
our eyes, where the tears were born once more and we realized what we
were facing in the world and what we should have been tending to.
We realized in a moment that those shields we use each day were worthless
and that they protected us from nothing but our fears, which in the
grand scheme of things were small and insignificant. There was a revolution
around the world as people came together in a massive show of support
and the rest, in words, is history.
Now, we stand a year and a few months later. Still changed, still different.
Still not the same. The United States of America no longer stands alone
in this world. It is every single other country on God’s green earth
that matters, as much as your home and mine. There is a world outside
our own. Outside our shields, outside our concerns of daily life, outside
the drama that seems to occupy many of us day to day. It is in this
that our Achilles Heel is found.
We need to understand what is going on outside our own world. And find
a way to change this world. Have we returned to normal life again? More
and more studies and reports from newspapers and television stations
state we are. Have we forgotten what this year held for us? Have we
forgotten what brought us to the point where we now have a color-coded
system to figure the threat level to the USA and other countries abroad?
We can never forget that day. We can move past the sadness and look
forward to the day when things such as life are normal again. But we
will have to wait. And we cannot sit still waiting for that moment.
We have to get out there. Be it talk, greet, smile, walk, ring, wave,
hug, kiss, grin, laugh, giggle or just plain give a nod of the head.
Each day you have a chance to make this world a better place. And each
day our world gets worse, from terrorist bombings in Bali to terrorist
hostage crisis in Russia to the next great event to splash across our
news networks.
You can make a difference.
You can reach out. Now more then ever we need good in this world. We
need someone to stand up and say, "I’m mad as hell and I’m not going
to take it anymore!" and mean it. Get out there and do something for
the betterment of your world, continent, country, state, province, county,
city, street, neighbor or just your house and those that live in it.
New York changed everything. It changed our daily life, our government
life and out lives in our homes. The Pentagon did the same. Shanksville,
Pennsylvania did the same. And whenever the next event happens, wherever
it occurs, however it occurs, we need to remember one thing: our time
on earth is limited by age.
Each day you wake up and go out your front door. And what do you do
after that? What is your next stop? What do you do in your day? I would
hope you would consider for a moment just what you do day by day. And
stop for just five minutes right here and think how you can change that.
How could you improve life daily for someone else? Is it talking more
to the person you tend to avoid and trying to reach out to them, or
maybe smiling at the random person you’ve now seen on your commute for
some time? Or is it just a simple hello in the morning? What would you
do to improve life around you for those around you and beyond?
Take five minutes and think real hard. Lives, hearts, minds and souls
may depend on your very decision, for in reality, you’ve got the power
to affect all of those. You just don’t know it yet. Change the world,
drop the shields and take on life with something new in your heart,
a spring in your step. This is our time. This is our chance.
See where it takes you.
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