Christopher Hamilton

I find it dif­fi­cult to really talk about the events of 9/11. The dif­fi­culty doesn't come because I lost any friends that day, or because I have a per­sonal con­nec­tion to the events. I obvi­ously have that shared empathy and shock that the world exper­i­enced as we watched those events unfold, but I was already in some­thing of a state of shock at the time. I had made the decision, as a 22 year old kid, to move to the other side of the world on my own and spend a year back­pack­ing around Aus­tralia. I'd arrived in the coun­try a week earlier, and with the levels of fear, excite­ment, and severe jet lag I was exper­i­en­cing, the events of that day are vague snap­shots of images and thoughts.

I remem­ber being woken up to the news and sit­ting in front of a TV all day watch­ing CNN, BBC News, and every other news chan­nel we could find in a state of total dis­be­lief. I remem­ber think­ing that what I was watch­ing couldn't be real, and I remem­ber call­ing home to speak to my fam­ily, and ex-work col­leagues. The job I had left to go trav­el­ing had an office in one of the towers, but we had closed it shortly before I had left. I want to say it was only weeks before, but it may have been longer than that. Either way I wanted to check whether any­one I knew would have been there; they weren't. The days after 9/11 were all a blur and I really don't have a clear pic­ture of those days in my head any­more. I know it changed everything, even for a back­packer on the other side of the world in Aus­tralia. The world became afraid overnight, air travel became much more restric­ted, and there was an under­cur­rent of anger that spread through­out every polit­ical dis­cus­sion regard­less of the country.

Even with all of this I didn't feel as con­nec­ted to the events as people back here in the UK did. Aus­tralia is a very strange place because it is so phys­ic­ally isol­ated from most of the world. That isol­a­tion had an unusual effect on me and I became detached from almost everything that wasn't my imme­di­ate sur­round­ings, the people I spent time with, or the events in Aus­tralia itself. For that entire year I had almost no clue what went on in the rest of the world bar­ring those major events that burst through that bubble. It wasn't until I got home a year later that I star­ted hav­ing real dis­cus­sions about 9/11, and the impact it had on the world.

I've had many dis­cus­sions about the events of that day and the wars that were born from it, but I don't think any have been as import­ant as the one I had today with my Sis­ter, the Eng­lish teacher. It was brief, only last­ing for a few minutes as we were in the car on our way to our par­ents for din­ner. It's topic was George W. Bush's plans for his Pres­id­ency before the events of 9/11 occurred.

I really didn't know this until today, but before George W. Bush had declared war on ter­ror, he had declared war on illit­er­acy. I assume, if like me you didn't know that, your reac­tion would have been to chuckle a little about W. talk­ing about illit­er­acy. Think on it though. While I have no respect for him as a Pres­id­ent now, I can't help but won­der how dif­fer­ent today's world would be if his Pres­id­ency hadn't been hijacked by those hor­rific attacks. They forced him to focus his time in office on war, and retali­ation for the acts of ter­ror­ism that happened that day. He called illit­er­acy a "national emer­gency" and really wanted to do some­thing about it. Just think how dif­fer­ent the world would be if even a frac­tion of the bil­lions upon bil­lions of dol­lars spent on the wars had gone to edu­ca­tion in America.

It blew my mind!

It made me think about that day ten years ago in a slightly new light. Not only did the events of that day hor­rify Amer­ica and the world, they poisoned the polit­ical land­scape of Amer­ica from that day onward. Then poten­tially the worst thing, other than the loss of life obvi­ously, those events caused would be the dam­age to the edu­ca­tion of mil­lions and mil­lions of Amer­ican people for years and years to come. I read about how the Amer­ican edu­ca­tion sys­tem is fail­ing it's stu­dents, and how Pres­id­ents Bush and Obama have tried to cre­ate reforms to fix the prob­lem. I read about schools try­ing to remove some sci­ences from the cur­riculum in vari­ous dis­tricts because they don't align with their reli­gious beliefs, (my opin­ion of that last point — those people are fuck­ing idi­ots). It's extremely dif­fi­cult to find an art­icle talk­ing about Amer­ican pub­lic school edu­ca­tion in any­thing other than a bad light.

Would that still be the case if Bush had been able to spend his time and money on edu­ca­tion rather than war?

Unfor­tu­nately that's some­thing we will never know.

This whole opin­ion comes from someone out­side look­ing in. That dis­cus­sion with my Sis­ter got me think­ing, and I found I had to write some­thing down because my mind wouldn't let me think on any­thing else until I did.

You should go and read an Amer­ican point of view of today, and the last ten years. I can't think of any­one bet­ter to send you to than Brad 'Otis' Wil­lis and his post: "To the vic­tims of 9/11: I’m sorry". Brad as always writes from the heart, and is simply a fant­astic writer.

I'm approach­ing the end of my first week of a very much needed two week break from the day job. Well that's sup­posed to be the case, I have had to deal with work related ques­tions 3 out of 4 days so far this week. My phone is going to be switched off for the remainder of my time away from the office so there will be no more interruptions.

I had grand plans for my two week break that began with hav­ing a great time at my friends wed­ding last week­end. That was achieved very suc­cess­fully as my body could testify to three days later when I was still exhausted. Then my plan had been to go visit friends in Canada. That how­ever didn't exactly fall into place. I'm not in Canada just now, though I really wish I was. A few things fell the wrong way and it just wasn't going to be a feas­ible trip this year. It's been tent­at­ively penciled in for next sum­mer, which should be excel­lent if it all goes to plan.

So with my ini­tial plans out the win­dow I star­ted to think of things I could do with my time. The first week was set aside for recov­ery from both the wed­ding and work. My brain has been in dire need of time away from the myriad of issues I've had to deal with at work this year, and to start pro­cessing some­thing else entirely. Namely this fledgling writ­ing career of mine. This makes the intru­sion of the work ques­tions a little more annoy­ing than they would oth­er­wise be.

This week has been, for the most part, greatly relax­ing. The fact that it's Thursday already caught me a little off guard. Even though my break is approach­ing it's peak, I'm now finally relaxed enough, and in a place to actu­ally write some­thing with struc­ture, though this isn't really it. This post is really just to men­tally clear some space before get­ting into a few pro­jects I have in the wings underway.

This week I allowed myself to sleep in late, and read without think­ing about time con­straints. It's been a week where I've read two books, and com­pleted Dragon Age II on the PS3, and that's with spend­ing a lot of time with friends and drag­ging myself out of bed closer to noon more days than I should admit.

I now have ten days left before I head back to my day job. That gives me time to focus on the path I really want to walk rather than the scat­ter gun approach I've been employ­ing up to now. This rest has now given me the time to strip away any excuses I might have had stop­ping me from really mak­ing the effort with this jour­ney, and these next ten days give me the oppor­tun­ity to make sig­ni­fic­ant strides for­ward with my goals.

Now it's time to stop talk­ing about that next major step, and to just get it done.