Jaghut

I should have honestly finished writing this yesterday, when the message was a bit more... poignant. But you'll just have to settle for it now.

Yesterday was the eleventh of September, a day of auspicious remembrance. A day when we drown our individual thoughts in favour of one mass generational act of remembrance and grieving.

Every year, I'm reminded of what happens when the thoughts of madness are given voice in more than one head. Whether through one horrific act, or the countless horrific acts commited in answer, I'm reminded that none of this would have happened if the gnawing, crazy thought in one person's head had stayed locked up there. Each person, as an individual, is an island of thought and reasonable in their own right.

Put enough people together though, and that thought, that idea, cuts loose. Expanding like a ripple at first, and then a wave. The actions of one person are easily quashed, but the moment that will, that desire for action is taken up by many arms, by many wills, it becomes a real force, and one that's difficult to stay. For every person that takes up the call, it becomes harder for others to ignore it. To avoid also being swept up in the tide.

If, for 24 hours, every person in the world had been cut off from every other person on the eleventh of September, two-thousand and one, who knows where we would be on this eleventh of September, two-thousand and nine? Who knows where this wave of violence would've stopped?

Indeed it was horrific, but if we're to answer every cruelty with a greater one... well, then only the reaper stands to win.

On September 11th, I am keen to remember only one thing. It's my sister's birthday, and despite the paranoia and calls for renewed violence, I'm only interested in that one detail. Else it's a day like any other.

And like any day, if we're going to pick and choose which atrocities are remembered, then we should remember every one.