Flight 11
Madeline Sweeney, 35, Acton, MA
I wasn’t supposed to work that day. I had taken the extra shift for a friend. She needed the time off, and I needed to work. When she called, asking if I could take it, at first I hesitated, but then something urged me to say yes. So, I was off to LA the next morning.
When I arrived at the airport, the place was crazy busy. People everywhere trying to get to their flights as well as various attendants and captains. It’s not that there were a lot of people, just that the energy was frenetic. There was a sort of buzz about the energy on the plane, too, but I didn’t take much notice of it. Some days were just like that.
On the plane, something felt weird, though, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was I was feeling. But when everything started to happen, I knew this is what I had been feeling and what I was here for. I had felt something ominous coming and this was it. But I knew for some reason that I had been drawn here, so I needed to do whatever I could with the situation. If all I could do was ease the fear of the passengers - if not save their lives - then that’s what I was there to do.
I wish I could say that I did more, or that I was capable of doing more. I wish I had known it was coming and then had the power to stop it. But having known what was to come, what could I have done? What could any of us have done? It was coming and it was beyond us. A power greater than us was behind this.
It was the power of hatred and anger and misunderstanding and hurt feelings. Of believing that one way is all right and the other is all wrong and that vengeance is ours. Vengeance. Against a difference of opinion. Can’t we even have that anymore?
The world lost nearly 3,000 innocent lives on 9/11, but there are innocent lives lost every day over the same things. The same issues. The same anger over someone seeing and believing things differently than we do. And we don’t need to leave this country to find those angry oppositions. There are people here still killed for being different or having different beliefs.
There is something that everyone needs to understand. No one has it exactly right. We’re on earth trying to get it right. But we are allowed to be different. We are supposed to be different, because part of the reason we are together on earth is to be different together and to not only tolerate each others’ differences, but to enjoy and embrace them. Nothing will be taken from your life by letting someone else have theirs.
So stop now. Just stop. And ask yourself what would happen to your life if you just let the person who annoys you most for the way they are, just be the way they are. The best you can hope for is that someone will do the same for you. The worst ... ? Well, we’ve seen a taste of the worst.
Will this philosophy change or end terrorism? Probably not. But if it ends other kinds of hatred, discrimination, prejudice - all its own kind of terrorism - then it’s a good start. We can fight until there is nothing left. Or we can save and grow what we have. It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be. But the rewards are beyond what you can imagine. You have great power in you. How you choose to use it could change the world.
