Where were you when the world stopped turning?

To anybody who watched television that day, who saw those planes slam into the twin towers, or who saw the people who jumped, falling, and heard the sound they made when they hit the pavement, the world will never be the same. It changed, irrevocably, that day. 9/11.

Of course the change was far greater for those who were immediate victims and their loved ones. But even here, in New Zealand, our hearts broke, and ached, and sobbed as we watched broadcast after broadcast, update after update. Unable to watch anything else. Unable to talk or think about anything else. The thought of what those people were going through, was, well, unthinkable. Unbearable.

It didn’t matter that we live in New Zealand, or if you lived anywhere else in the world, well, almost. You cannot see something like that, and remain unchanged.

9/11 in the United States, is 9/12 here in New Zealand. Thanks to the International Date Line. And the 12th of September is my youngest daughter’s birthday. She’s never likely to forget that particular one.

I was at home, getting ready for work, when my phone rang. It was my daughter calling to tell me to turn on the TV. And just like that, the world as I’d known it was gone. Or was it our innocence that we lost that day? That colours our world a different shade now?

I remember being horrified by what I was seeing, shocked and awed that anyone would dare to do something like that to the Americans, and afraid, very very afraid, of what it might lead to. After all, we’ve had two world wars to date and both were started by events that did not seem as momentous as the acts of 9/11. Would this not trigger a third? I had too many loved ones of just the right age to be sent away to fight. Something that became a very real nightmare for so many American families.

We weren’t affected the way the immediate victims were, or even the way Americans were. But we were and are affected. The very least of which manifests itself in the heavier security we experience in airports when traveling, and the loss of some of our freedoms and privacy, all in the name of national security or anti terrorism measures. In that sense, the terrorists won. But as we’ve watched the response of the American people to that day, we know that no matter what, the terrorists will never win what they want. They cannot, ever, win the hearts or the minds of good, decent people who will always rise up above such terrible oppression.

Where were you that day? what did you feel? Share with us in the comments below.