Where there's a will...

(Note: This is my final 9/11 essay. I think I've said enough about it, just like everyone else these days. I'm planning on avoiding the television tomorrow. You should, too.)

In case you missed it today, the U.S. government raised the national warning state from "elevated" to "high," meaning the government is on a heightened state of alert against some threat we don't know about. The state of rising tenseness stemmed from unspecific warnings from Team Bush about possible terrorist attacks on the Sept. 11 anniversary, when trained killers cut a scar into the capital of the world. So, the government is positioning itself to do whatever it can against the terrorists. We don't know how the killers will strike; we don't know how the authorities will respond. Meanwhile, we, the potential targets, have to be more aware of suspicious people and activities around us.

Personally, I exercised my vigilance by buying some flowers for my wife, a box of Twinkles, some cookies and milk. I figure if all hell breaks loose tomorrow, I'll call in sick and watch the end of the world on BBC America. Mayhem, with an English accent.

I guess I should be more concerned by the threat of terrorist attacks, but I'm not. It's not that I'm overwhelmed by the news reports; I work at a newspaper. I scroll through misery every morning. No, I think I'm just used to change. Humans are remarkable adapters. We've settled into nearly every climate and have a home on every landmass. Shoot, right now there are people living in space, floating around and getting use to the idea of food in packets and restraining yourself to use the toilet.

Back on earth, it's a lot more complex with the threat that someone across the globe is putting a plan in action that will end with the detonation of a suitcase nuke at the base of the Space Needle. Or the Sears Tower. Or the Transamerica Building. Or...well, you get the drift. Pick a landmark and unleash the grim reaper.

And strangely, I never pondered how the plotting mind of terrorist works until I met a seven-year-old boy at a party.

A few nights ago, my wife and I were at a party up on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. It wasn't anything wild, and I, avoiding grown-up talk, spent most of the time with Will, the seven-year-old son of one of the partygoers. On the floor, in a corner, he drew wild Rube Goldbergian blueprints for wild inventions, the purpose of which wasn't clear, but at one point a hamster was involved in the generation of electricity. You know, wild stuff that only kids can think of before the world stomps in and tries to teach them to not be so weird. Sharp, intuitive and a big fan of the Discovery Science cable channel, Will drew up crude plans that, without his knowledge, nailed the essence of the Internet and videoconferencing. I felt bad for him, destined to grow up to find out half your inventions have been done already.

Anyway, as the party was winding down and my wife was tugging at my sleeve to go home, Will and I were trying to figure out how to gather energy while in space to make space travel to the center of the galaxy possible. Will, undeterred by the bounds of logic, speedily drew solar panels and engines and cosmic rays and it hit me. Eventually, we will be hit hard by terrorists, and it’ll be harder than the World Trade Center.

We're going to get hit somewhere vital, whether it be in an information center, water filtration plant, a transportation hub, food...something. If a seven-year-old can come up with wild ideas about getting cable television into your home or describe videoconferencing, then someone with schooling, patience and blind hatred will figure out a way to get at some nerve center of this country. The terrorists have time on their side, maybe money.

Keep in mind that the people who did the Sept. 11 attacks, the ones in the planes, they pulled off a mind-bogglingly complex operation. Nineteen men brought a nation to a grinding halt using nothing more than box cutters and a hybrid of traditional terrorist tactics of suicide bombing and airplane hijacking. The people who did this lived in the U.S. for years, training and living their lives until one day they got the call and steeled themselves with the they hatred they carried so stealthily for years. One day, someone's neighbor, someone who paid the bills and obeyed stop signs, helped other like-minded allies take over four planes and three of them hit their targets. All the time, they were ready to kill, and not one wavered or dropped a dime on his cohorts.

But back to the motivation for a second. Motive is everything, and it's the least examined aspect in this one-year anniversary media orgy. Why did the terrorists hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Besides the oft-repeated naive analysis that the terrorists "hate us because of our freedom," what answers have been given for the target selection? What do the terrorists want? Terrorism is the tool by one group to get another group to pay attention to something. On 9/11, America got a wake-up call that the world was more complex and dangerous than we thought it was, as Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist David Horsey points out. We now have to pay attention to what's being done in our name around the world. What happens in one isolated country will find its way back home.

It's easy to want to go back to the past and remember that awful day, and by doing so we'll end up trapped in the dead, thinking of the dead and living in the past tense. But the past has happened; it's the future we have to worry about.

So, now what?

This is what we're living with in the United States these days: A forever war with attackers who could strike anytime and a 24/7 siege mentality. Like the Brits during the Nazi bombing of London or any Israeli or Palestinian, I suppose I just got used to it. If I gotta go, I go. In the meantime, I pay my bills, pet my cats and try to be nice to my wife.

Of course, it doesn't help that the United States is being led by a guy who colors his foreign policy coloring books with black and white crayons. It doesn't help that he's surrounded by people who really, totally, completely, must-have-to bomb Iraq. It doesn't help that, in our names and our tax dollars, we have lost some fundamental civil rights and countless civilians have been killed in Afghanistan, including some in the most heartbreaking of circumstances.

We're a world poised on war, forgetting that in this war on terror, we're going to lose because you can't bomb out hatred and revenge. You can't bring peace into a world at the point of gun. We’ll never be able to stamp out terrorism as long as serious underlying problems remain unaddressed and someone somewhere is willing to blow himself up to make a point, score points with his God or because he thinks there's no hope.

And yet, I have hope.

I draw hope from the most unlikely of sources: Sept. 11, 2001. One of the most grisly sidebars to an otherwise terrible event came with the story of people jumping out of the burning World Trade Center buildings to certain death. Why they jumped, what motivated them to plummet earthward, will remain a mystery only solved by our own deaths. Were they hopeless or did they see some glimpse of heaven and jumped to follow it? Did they believe they could make it or where they afraid of death by a consuming fire? We are left with these chilling questions.

But one story, summed up eloquently by Brian Doyle, made us all think about the ultimate expression of love. A pair of jumpers were seen holding hands as they jumped. Again, we don't know the full story. Maybe one was trying to pull back the other from jumping. Maybe they hastily formed a joint suicide pact to face the end together. No matter what the preface, their grasp said more about the better angels of our nature than any candlelight vigil or mass-market slogan. In the end, two people found each other and said, "I won't let go of you, no matter what. Whatever comes, I'll be here for you." Using the most tactile of senses, touch, they formed an embrace of comfort, a final intimate sacrifice that comforted them high above concrete streets as they fell to their eternal reward.

I draw hope from that. I believe that, deep down, we do love each other. We can rise to the worst occasion, giving comfort up until the end. Our love is ceaseless. Our concepts of compassion are boundless and yet simple. No matter what transgressions the pair may have committed in their lives as a single unit, together they proved that humanity isn't doomed to the constant cycle of hate, blood, revenge and misery. There is a better path. Hopefully, it'll take less than a disaster to bring it out of us.

Tomorrow, of all days, my lesbian coworker and her partner are signing domestic partnership paperwork. While it wasn't done in some grand gesture to take back the Sept. 11 date from the shadow of destruction (it was to make sure her partner had health insurance while she went to law school), it's a bit of celebration in the air anywhere, a sign that life goes on. Every year, for as long as they are together, they will celebrate Sept. 11 as the date of their union. To paraphrase the wizard Gandalf from "The Lord of the Rings," such a thing is reassuring in these dark times.

I suppose that is what's going to save us in the end. We're going to go on and set up our own lives. We'll find each other, love one another and try to forge a future together. We'll have fights, we'll have setbacks, but invest in each other, hoping kind words and loving actions will sprout a chain of compassion and trust.

Sept. 11, 2001 wasn't the end of anything or the beginning of a new era. We've always had strife and war and one ideology trying to snuff out another. What has changed is the means of destruction and the names of the major players. What hasn't changed is that life still will go on. You can be afraid of some phantom menace out there ready to blow up a bomb or you can side with a more hopeful outlook. You can see that peace is obtainable and a peaceful future is possible, albeit through a lot of hard work and occasional failures. Thanks to global communication and the Internet, we can see misery all over the world in full color and in real time. We know about trouble spots and famine and ethnic hatred. We Americans finally woke up on Sept. 11, 2001. We know we need to fix our ravenous consumer culture. We need to fix our foreign policy. We need to fix the environment, both the natural one and the one of discourse between peoples, religions and cultures. The United States was credited with helping turn back fascism during the Second World War. We can do great things when challenged, and there is no greater challenge before us than our world right now.

To paraphrase Gandhi, we should be the change that we seek. And, to tell you the truth, I'm really damn tired of being scared.

It's time for a change.