The origin of our present fears

Nine years ago this morning, my husband at the time called me while I was still in my jammies, and he told me about what had happened to the World Trade Center. Turn on the tee vee, he said.

It was one of several very serious conversations we had about terrorism.

But as it pertains to today and today's relevance, it's a part of my lexicon that I heard first about the issues in New York from him, and I'll never forget it.

No one will.

I spent this evening not unlike I spent my time nine years ago today: glued to my television, watching coverage of 9/11.

Tonight, the coverage of the events of nine years ago were on the History Channel, and it brought the morning of that Tuesday nine years ago right back into sharp, if not sharper, focus.

With the odd exception that the events that unfolded in real-time nine years ago didn't come with a "may not be suitable for some viewers" cryptic introduction, the hindsight version of the events of September 11 are almost 20/20.

And in trying to apply a bit of hindsight to those events as those moments correlate to the present day, perhaps the most evidentiary conclusion is that we've all become so much more fearful.

About almost everything.

We're afraid about who can pray where, despite our country's Constitution. It's threatening to some people. God knows - whoever's God knows - why it's so difficult to just let people be.

It may be because of what happened nine years ago. But is it justified, all of this hostility?

Watching the rewind of what happened nine years ago today doesn't seem to reflect the anger that's everywhere almost a decade later.

Take a look at the video. The audio.

On the actual 9/11, there was an atmosphere of caring that seeped into every crazed pore of our collective fear.

Nine years ago, we all seemed to care about where people were and if they were safe more than what they were doing or who they prayed to or slept with or voted for.

We were less fearful not only of the unknown enemy. We were also less fearful of each other.

The events of September 11 have robbed us all of a fundamental essence of who we are that made us great.

Trust.

The lack of that essence of trust has made us such cowards to fear.

I miss that element of trust; that piece of who we were that banded together for the greater good, for the love of the other regardless of our differences.

Fast forward from that day nine years ago, and the majority of us seem to be so afraid of almost everything.

I think that fear took root nine years ago.

I miss the easier, softer, more loving acceptance we all seemed to project to each other nine years and a day ago.

I miss the absence of fear; not only of the other, but of each other.

It almost seems like we've become our worst enemy.