United States Divided | Reflections on Post-9/11 Empathy and Division
Note: This essay discusses 9/11 and the cultural divisions that followed. It may be difficult for some readers, and it is shared with compassion and care.
I was only 14 the morning when everything changed. The Country. The World.
I woke up like any other day, expecting cartoons or maybe Judge Judy reruns, because, yes, even at 14 I loved my Judge Judy episodes. I’d have to get ready for school soon; I was being homeschooled at the time. Oh, what fun.
I flipped through channels in the comfort of my living room. But that morning, every channel was the same: Breaking News: America Under Attack.
At first, I was frustrated: where were my shows? But as I sat, staring at the dark billowing smoke rising from the burning towers on every screen, a quiet dread crept into my soul. I didn’t know it yet, but I was watching history. And for the first time in my life, I realized: this wasn’t about me. It wasn’t even about my family. It was about all of us.
In the days that followed, something strange settled over the country, a cracked and frayed kind of togetherness. Everywhere I looked, American flags waved from porches, car windows, shop doors. Strangers smiled at each other in grocery stores. People held doors open a little longer. There was a gentleness, an unspoken agreement: we were in this together. But even then, even at 14, I sensed it was delicate; a unity born not from love, but from shared fear, shared grief. And quietly, I wondered: why does it take tragedy to make us remember kindness? To remember compassion.
But that gentleness didn’t last. Slowly, quietly, it started to slip away. The flags remained, but they started to mean something different, less a symbol of unity, more a line in the sand. The smiles faded. The doors closed. And beneath the surface, fear curdled into suspicion. I watched as “Love Thy Neighbor” became a conditional phrase: love thy neighbor, unless they look different; unless they pray different; unless they vote different. The togetherness that once felt like an embrace had hardened into a wall, to a fortress that I wasn’t invited to. And I wondered: was it ever really unity at all, or just a momentary ceasefire in a country already at war with itself?
With that in mind, I pose this question to you, reader—when was the last time you saw a stranger as a neighbor? When was the last time you held a door open, not out of obligation, but out of care? When was the last time you believed we were in this together? I ask myself, too. I’m not innocent, and I’m far from blameless. I’ve looked away when I could have leaned in. I’ve swallowed my voice when I should have spoken. But I wonder: when did kindness become weakness? When did empathy become expendable? When did “woke” become an insult, and being “asleep” become the preference? Which is ironic, because most of what I heard from others was “Wake up!”, and yet, somehow, being “woke” is bad. Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
If it takes another tragedy to remind us of our shared humanity, how to show one another compassion, then what does that say about us? About me? About you?
I still think about that 14-year-old kid from time to time, the one sitting on the couch, watching history unfold in real time, not yet knowing just how heavy the world could be. What would I tell him now? Would I warn him about the divisions to come? About the way kindness would fade, trust would fracture, and flags would turn into swords? Or would I tell him to hold tight to that brief, fragile memory of togetherness, even knowing how quickly it unraveled?
We were never perfect. But we were kinder. And we could be again. The question isn’t can we, it’s when will we.
“Our human compassion binds us the one to the other, not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.” - Nelson Mandela