Flight 93
Mark Bingham, 31, San Francisco, CA
I’ve met a great many challenges in my life. I’ve seen the rise of AIDS; the atrocities of discrimination against gays and other peoples, inexplicably considered “minority groups”; and personal trials in my own life that molded me into who I turned out to be. But while I can recognize in people the ability to do terrible things, I can also see the ability to do the amazing. And that is what I witnessed that day, to both extremes: the amazingly brutal and inhumane; and the amazingly brave and loving.
I don’t know what gets into the hearts of people who commit these atrocities. I don’t know what leads them to believe that this is the way to go, but I do feel that the mind and the spirit are very fragile in times of uncertainty and strong and invincible in times of determination. I don’t think these two states of mind are mutually exclusive, however. The fragile mind and ego can also be quite determined and in that state, destructive.
I don’t expect anyone to forgive what happened that day. I know how it resonates. I know how it lives in the souls who were left behind in the literal and figurative rubble. And I know that the images you saw and the emotions you felt on that day and in its aftermath are more than you can get past any time soon. But part of our journey – arguably the hardest part - is to learn to understand. In its most basic sense, to understand why people see things so differently than we do. Why other beings, who are made of the same parts and chemicals, have families, have love and sadness in them, can all see things so differently.
We don’t have to reach to the people who caused the events of that day to examine this. Look to your own home. You can grow up in the same family as someone else and remember the experience differently, see the world accordingly, and mold your life based on those views. If people in one family can be so divided, we can only expect that people raised in different cultures, with different beliefs, may not agree with us.
This is not to excuse what happened. This is just a door to open discussion: why do we grow up in the same world and yet see it so differently? Ask someone sometime and then just listen. Differences in any culture could be better explored this way.
Everyone wants to be heard. Everyone wants their opinions to be considered valid. Turning an angry hand to people for being different hasn’t cured anything yet. Why don’t we try this?
