This time of year always seems to bring forth contemplation and introspection for us Americans. For some it's just a faint memory filled with chatter from your parents, for others, it's horrifying phone calls and that familiar smell of cruel destruction. Still, no matter how old you were on September 11, 2001, you recognize it as the day America's heart was broken.
I won't share heartbreaking stories or new found facts from the aftermath of 9/11. I personally believe that there will never be enough discussion or defenses to make it better. The question I'm more concerned with answering lies a bit closer to home: what does it mean to be an American in 2016?
Listen to music, watch the news, go to the mall. Everything we listen to, watch, and wear tells the world we're Americans and proud of it. Bruce Springsteen, Creating a social culture out of fall, Bonfires, Holidays, Football; these are the things running through our veins. But more than the parties and Grammy nominations, we're left with the generic answer any American could give you. "I'm proud to be an American because America's the land of opportunity." Opportunity. Say it to yourself. What does it mean? It means we get the opportunity to succeed and to be whatever we want, and not only the opportunity to succeed, but to do it and do it greatly. Immediately following is the catch. When we're told we can succeed greatly, I think we forget this also means we can fail greatly. We can fail miserably and constantly and without mercy. We can lay there kicking and screaming, or we can get up and spit out the bullet and refuse to take it.
Being an American means living on a silver line. It means you can be great or you can be ashamed but either way, the choices that brought you there were entirely your own. You mark yourself with the achievements and defeats of your lifetime and your day to day life is the outcome of all this.
More than ever, we have to remind ourselves of who we are. We are the people who were sitting in front of their televisions across the nation watching live as our red, white, and blue made it's mark on outer space. We created a concept of universal access better known as the world wide web, and today I can sit on my Chromebook researching what thousands of people across the country think it means to be an American within the comfort of my home. The voices are deafening. We designed automobiles. We've changed war on a nuclear scale and developed more stereotypes than probably any other country. We created government and changed what that is and means more times that you'd care to count. We've raised our voices to the heavens, but we've also remained silent when we should have been screaming.
We choose, regret, relish, love, take back, give, laugh, cry, and die trying to make our mark. We do all these things and we do it as Americans; confused, afraid, and proud.
At the end of the day when you lay your head down at night, remember how far we've come but never forget how much further we've got to go.
