Twenty-Five Years
Today marks twenty-five years.
Twenty-five years since the phones started ringing and nobody knew what to say. Since the smoke rose over lower Manhattan and the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Since 2,977 people kissed someone goodbye in the morning and didn’t come home that night.
Twenty-five years. And we’ve gotten very good at moving on.
We take off our shoes at the airport without thinking about it. We stand in longer lines at concerts and theme parks and sporting events and we just deal with it. It’s the new normal. We adjust. We adapt. We move forward because that’s what you do.
But do we stop? Do we actually stop and think about the 2,977 people who didn’t get to move forward? About the kids who grew up without a parent? The spouses who learned to set the table for one? The parents who buried their children and then had to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives?
I think about them a lot, not just in September. Not just the ones who died on that Tuesday morning either. The ones who died in the years that followed. In the mountains of Afghanistan and the streets of Iraq and places most Americans couldn’t find on a map. The battle that started that day didn’t end that day. It is still being fought. Right now. By someone’s son. Someone’s daughter. Someone who put on a uniform and said I’ll go so you don’t have to.
We are an interesting people.
We fly our flags on the right days. We post the right things on the right anniversaries. We thank veterans on Veterans Day and remember the fallen on Memorial Day and we feel good about that.
But what about the random Tuesday?
What about the Tuesday when nobody is watching and no holiday is trending and the soldier is still standing on foreign soil and the first responder is still suiting up for a shift and the military spouse is still sitting at a dinner table with an empty chair in it. Not because of a business trip, but because of a deployment, or a mission, or a flag folded at a funeral?
We have men and women standing on foreign soil right now holding a line so we can go to the gym. So we can argue about things on the internet. So we can eat at our favorite restaurant and drive home and sleep in a warm bed and wake up tomorrow and do it again without giving a second thought to what makes that possible.
I’m not saying we should live in guilt. I’m saying we should live in gratitude. There’s a difference. Guilt is paralyzing. Gratitude is activating.
I believe in this country. I believe in the right to stand up for what you believe in, to push back, to demand better from your leaders and your institutions. That’s not unpatriotic. That’s exactly what the founders had in mind.
But there’s a version of civic engagement that has become nothing more than noise. Keyboard warriors lobbing insults across social media while real warriors are wearing armor on their chests with family photos folded up inside their helmets. People rage-posting about a country they’ve never been asked to sacrifice anything for, while somewhere a mom is checking her phone for the hundredth time today hoping for a message that says I’m okay.
If you don’t like something about this country, I respect that. Do something about it. Run for office. Volunteer. Show up. Build something. Vote. But if your contribution to the conversation is just anger. If you’re not willing to do anything but complain, then maybe sit this one out and let the people who are actually paying the price have the floor for a minute.
Today I want to ask you to do something simple.
Thank God for the country you live in. Not a perfect country. There is no such thing. But a country where the argument is still allowed to happen. Where the flag still means something to someone willing to die for it.
Thank your neighbor who served. The veteran at your church. The kid down the street who signed the papers at eighteen and came back different. The first responder who runs toward the thing everyone else is running away from. Not for glory, not for money, but because somebody has to and they decided it would be them.
Think about the mom who sits at the dinner table alone tonight. The dad who is missing a soccer game because he’s seven thousand miles away doing something most of us will never fully understand. The parents who lowered their child into the ground not from illness, not from accident but from doing what they do every time they put on the uniform.
Officer. Firefighter. Soldier. Airman. Sailor. Marine.
They didn’t ask you to understand it. They just asked you to be worth it.
Twenty-five years later the smoke has cleared. The headlines have moved on. The news cycle has found a thousand other things to be outraged about.
But the sacrifice didn’t stop.
It never stopped.
So today, and maybe on some random Tuesday too, put down whatever argument you’re in the middle of. Look up from the screen. Find someone who served or someone who loves someone who serves and just say thank you.
Not because it fixes anything. But because they deserve to know that somebody noticed.
Somebody remembers.
We remember.