Never Forget

When I was 8 I woke up one morning.  As far as I knew, it was just another school day.  I was matting down my crazy bed head, stretching awake and wondering what I was going to eat for breakfast.  My mom was in the bathroom curling her hair, and the news was playing in the background just like it did every morning. On my morning walk to the bathroom I saw the horrifying scene of smoke streaming from the World Trade Center.  Of course, my day went on as usual.  As an eight year old it's hard to understand how something like that in New York City (Basically light years away from me) could affect me at all. I went to school that day and things were strange.  We spent almost the entire day reflecting on our patriotism.  We heard announcements about what had happened and all the adults scrambled trying to figure out how to explain this tragedy to children. 

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Today, in this age of information, everyone knows a little bit about a lot of things.  It's an incredible thing that is causing a lot of problems.  While love spreads like wildfire and photos showing patriotism and kindness circulate all over the country in minutes the same things happen with hate.  More than half of the things I see on Facebook and Twitter are people arguing about who is more right.  We're divided in everything that matters and everything that doesn't.  I constantly see people spreading words of hate.  Calling each other morons and liars. There's hypocrisy and bigotry.  Prejudice and discrimination.  Constant arguing about police brutality, Planned Parenthood, marriage licenses, amnesty, and who is dumber or more hypocritical.  I think about what happened 14 years ago and how it happened because of hate. Because people refuse to understand each other and continue to be intolerant of each other.
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I joined the Army because I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself.  I wanted to put my opinions aside and just do what I felt was right.  I haven't been any where and I haven't done anything, but I stand next to people who have and one day, I may have to.
And for their sake, I just wish everyone could learn to get along. 

Never Forget.