🧭 Make the Better Choice

A reflection, 22 years after September 11.

There is a yin and yang to the story of where we find ourselves 22 years after 9/11. It is a story of reductive behavior but also stunning advancement - a bifurcation most evident in our current cultural and political polarization, and a battle we continue to wage decades after it began.

Today, 9/11 and its fallout finds its most telling crystallization in the choices we continue to make in its wake.

Even in our ignorance / we gained consciousness

Before 9/11, I was everyone except for who I really was.

Mexican, Indian, Native American. Some accurate, none wholly so. The real story of who I was and where I came from was beyond comprehension for people who couldn’t even find these countries on a map.

And then there were my odd behaviors. Certainly no one knew why I randomly abstained from food and drink for a month (yes, not even water).

That all changed after 9/11. Along with millions of others, I started to be noticed and in some cases harmed.

America’s ignorance was on full display in the…