Life goes on. For most of us. It may go on a little differently than before, but it does go on. The news coverage is no longer overwhelming, the celebrity concerts have begun. Flags have returned to full staff. The show is up. I'm getting ready to move. And all in all, life goes on. And yet...
I look at the planes in the sky a little more closely. I've always loved airplanes, and in a week and a half I'll be getting in one again to go visit the most beautiful woman in the world. (who, strange as it may seem, loves me too) I also look up a bit more when I go to work. The John Hancock building is right there and I can't help but wonder if its design would hold up any better. I look at the flags in people's windows and wonder how long they'll stay. Will I put mine back up in my new apartment? And I sit and watch the news and wonder, when the bombs start falling... will we be more careful about who they fall on then the people we're trying to get were? What makes America better than Afghanistan? Were the people who participated in the Boston Tea Party terrorists? When our own states wanted to split from our government, we went to war to stop them, but we cheered and helped when the states of the USSR did the same thing. Yeah, you say, but the reasons were different. But who are we to decide what's a better reason.
I've always believed that you cannot truly understand what you believe until you've questioned it and looked at it as if the belief is false. That is the only way you can be sure that what you believe, for you, must be true.
So, by that token, I ask these questions. And then I have to answer them as such. The world changes over time, and we refine what our criteria for supporting a movement is. But, it's always freedom. If people are trying to be more free, then we support them. If they are fighting to restrict freedom, we oppose them. And yes... what looks like freedom in one situation can look like repression in another, so sometimes we make the wrong choice. But we keep trying. And that, quite simply, is what we must do now. Keep trying... help people be free. Free from oppression, free from fear, free from danger, free to choose who leads them, free to choose what they believe, and free to let the person who believes differently from them have the same freedoms. So... keep trying.
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