This Happened

Okay, so in my defense, I woke up before 6 am for the past four days.

I have been doing absolutely nothing this past week except eat sugary things, write 20 pages of my final journalism paper, and row at ungodly hours. So yesterday, when I was trying to edit my paper and put together my final bibliography, my eyes began to hurt. It was 7:30pm, but I thought it would be a genius idea to take a short break from the computer and take like, I dunno, a half hour nap.

Cue epic failure.

My alarm did go off a half hour later, but I hit the sleep button so many times it eventually turned the alarm off. I was woken up at 11:30pm by a call from my sister, who inquired if I had been asleep. "No, no...I'm not...guhhh..." I lied ineffectively. My incoherence probably gave me away. She was saying something excitedly into the phone. My sister was the one providing me with breaking news. I was embarrassed, even in my sleepy stupor. Hey, being aware of current events was MY thing!

So, at her encouragement, I stumbled out to my computer and cued up the New York Times livestream. Osama Bin Laden was dead. And as I listened to the speech, waking up slowly and letting it all sink in, I felt no catharsis or celebratory feelings. On Facebook I read of all my classmates past and present reporting of parades and parties erupting on their campuses. And I felt tired.

The towers came down when I was almost 11 years old. I did not understand what had happened. The attack was so outside of my day to day--my greatest hardship was finding a seat on the crowded middle school bus--that the true impact of the attacks couldn't totally reach me. I cried because others around me were caused such pain. I felt separate from it.

The anger and frustration grew as I got older. I heard of soldiers and civilians dying. Politics were more tangible to me. I was developing a sense of right and wrong at an international level and America's complex role within this sense.

I am uncomfortable with the athletic-event like parties and riots celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden. I believe he got what he deserved. I believe he was an evil, hatred-spewing man. But my problem is that we find a solution in his death. The problem IS people like Osama Bin Laden, but we cannot truly celebrate his death until we stop endorsing this type of hatred just because it's not directed at us. We tune into people spewing this kind of hatred every day. We vote for them. Though they are not plotting mass death, I think the death of Bin Laden should make us take a step back and realize the consequences of promoting blind hatred. In the honor of people who died in September 11th, we should seek to eliminate this brand of vitriol because we have seen where it can lead.

Okay guys, I'm sorry for getting political. I know it's obnoxious and preachy. I'll return to regularly scheduled programming next post.