Caitlin Hall

One year ago today, I woke to the sounds of a phone ringing and a muffled television being turned on. I was just a few weeks into my freshman year and, having a brutal math exam scheduled for the next day, I had driven to my parents' house the night of Sept. 10 in search of a quiet refuge from the noise of my dorm.

I remember my mother's gasp down the hall, remember the plain but urgent way she told me, remember pinching myself in my half-conscious stupor just to be sure. Sitting in the most comfortable seat in the house, bundled in my age-old pajamas, surrounded by the artifacts of a thousand nights of studying just like the one before, everything about me unraveled. Eight days before my 18th birthday, my adolescence ended with the force of a passenger plane slamming into a skyscraper.

It was days before I stopped shaking completely, and even longer before I ceased to dream of bodies falling from the sky. I have a stack of newspapers in my room that I haven't looked through since the day I spent scuttling around town buying them up. I remember vividly the photographs they contain; they're something I know better than to look at twice.

I tell you this because I want you to understand that Sept. 11 changed me. In one swift moment, all the illusions and assumptions I had of my place in the world, of safety, were shattered. And it radicalized me. I considered myself a Libertarian up until that point; now I cannot conceive of it.

Most importantly, though, I simply want you to know that Sept. 11 affected me. I am a liberal and a cynic, a conscientious objector to U.S. foreign policy almost in its entirety. But I am who I am, deliberately, because of my country and not in spite of it. Dissent is the greatest right we hold, and I am appreciative of it every time I write a column or attend a rally or argue with a professor. And when I object to the War on Terror or our imminent attack of Iraq, it is not because I lack respect for what happened one year ago today or because I sympathize with the perpetrators of such a heinous crime against humanity.

At the same time I will not, for love of my country, excuse apathy and ignorance. I will not acquiesce to the perpetuation of a cycle of retribution. I will not barter in human lives by exchanging one gross violation for another.

One year after what is possibly the greatest tragedy our nation has ever encountered, we have a choice.

We can continue to focus inward and nurse our deep myopia, ignoring the calamity daily confronting the rest of the world, even as we mourn our own losses. Or we can finally begin to listen to the voices of outrage, sorrow, and torment raised in unison from beyond our borders.

Last year's attack was shocking and horrific, yes, but so is that which happens every day across much of the globe. Catastrophes of a completely different order of magnitude are occurring all around us, and we are as good as blind to them.

Millions are dying of AIDS. Billions suffer from a lack of adequate food and water. Thousands of innocent civilians have died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S.-led campaign there, and many thousands more die each year in Iraq because of comprehensive sanctions imposed by the United Nations. And as we pause to remember the victims of the World Trade Center attack, we should not forget those still being detained indefinitely without civil liberties or evidence.

We have an enormous effect on the world around us, but we often fail to recognize it. On the anniversary of the first time that connection was brutally forced upon us, let's take the time to reflect on where we've been and where we're heading in terms of our appreciation and recognition of the rest of the world. We can either take Sept. 11 as a speed bump on that road, or as a U-turn.

Here is the lesson I will take away from Sept. 11: Buildings fall apart. People fall apart. Our fragile concept of our relation to the rest of the world falls apart. Our strength as individuals and as a nation are measured by how well we are able we use our hope, realism and resources to rebuild and improve upon all three.