An Eye Opening 5 years

It took me a while to figure out what I was going to write about today; should I write about my trip to Syracuse or should I write about the obvious thing to write about today, 9/11? I decided to hold off my Syracuse entry until tomorrow. It's a Monday and the dreary weather put my in a funk that wouldn't do justice to describing my wonderful weekend in NY. Thus, I will write about this infamous day in history. This is not out of obligation or because everyone else is doing it, but because it actually was a significant day in my own life that I've reflected upon today.

Like I said before, it's been a dreary day in DC. The solemn weather feels only appropriate for one of the main cities completely changed by 9/11. I visited Washington, DC precisely 2 months after the attacks and I was surprised to see all of the new security precautions. Today, almost all of those precautions have become the new norm. Likewise, a lot of things have become new norms for Americans. Whether it is x-raying our shoes at the airport or seeing an orange alert on the news, new concepts have become, like them or not, part of our everyday lives.

And for me, 9/11 marked a new norm in my life: awareness. The attacks came around the same time that I started reading the news and following politics more habitually. I just realized that within these past 5 years, I have transitioned from high school, to college, to law school. And each of these stages of my life provides me with a lot of new perspectives and greater conscientiousness of the realities of the world. It almost feels overwhelming to think about all of the problems and tragedies I started to wonder about or question in the past few years. There were big events like 9/11 (and in my opinion, subsequent problems with the handling of the situation like the erosion of civil liberties), Katrina, the Iraq War, the Tsunami. There were the day to day things like the declining state of schools, poverty, AIDs epidemics, and the number of people without adequate medical care.

All in all though, this awareness has been a mixed blessing that seems to come with adulthood and responsibility. While seeing people suffer is just painstaking, awareness has also made me see and appreciate the willpower of people and the heroism of everyday individuals. The past 5 years have been eye-opening and I expect the next 5 to be deciding what problems to tackle and putting my law degree into action.