What it means to be an American in a post 9/11 world

What it means to be an American in a post 9/11 world
mailto:dtrinko@limanews.com- 09.11.2007

I’m not a true American like I was on Sept. 11, 2001, as it turns out.
You probably aren’t either, depending on who’s labeling you.
As we mark the anniversary of the deadly terrorist hijackings that put airplanes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, this idea of “true American” seems to be on trial. Different juries offer differing verdicts.
One side argues you can’t be a true American if you’re not supporting our troops. Whatever the endeavor, we must support our troops’ continuing missions.
Another side argues you can’t be a true American unless you put the needs of families ahead of all others. If you love America, you want American soldiers to come home.
Both sides tend to throw ridiculous labels at one another, saying you’re a gun-toting conservative or give-peace-a-chance liberal.
More than anything else, they like to say they’re a true American, and anyone who disagrees is un-American or, worse yet, anti-American.
It’s this unwillingness to even listen to another side that makes me question if anyone’s a true American anymore. It seems so un-American to adopt a “my way or the highway” attitude toward anything.
You’re not entitled to your opinion the same way you were before the towers fell. You can’t disagree with the government like you did before the plane plunged into the Pentagon walls. You’re not supposed to show your dissent like you could before those heroic passengers guided that fourth plane away from its extremist mission and into the field.
I think I’m still just as much of a true American as I was on Sept. 11, 2001. I still love God, my mom and apple pie, just the same as I ever did.
You probably feel the same way. More than likely, we all do.
But that’s just not the message we seem to hear nowadays.
We’ve become less open to hearing opposing viewpoints. We’ve become more intolerant to those who think differently than we do. We’ve begun lobbing people into groups, saying their opinions don’t count if they don’t have some arbitrary opinion in common with ours.
I heard that recently from a caller who obviously disagreed with an editorial decision we’d made. He asked me if I’d served in the military. When I told him no, he blew up into a tirade about being a fat, happy liberal sitting in my comfy chair, making decisions that ruined people’s lives.
Truth be told, my chair’s not that comfortable. And most of the rest of his characterizations were off the mark too. They lacked some nuance we would’ve demanded before the terrorist attacks.
On this, the sixth anniversary of those attacks, I’ll stop for a moment of silence this morning to think about what happened, just like I have every year since it happened. I’ll think of the wasted lives who committed no crime that day, people whose only sins were to live in America and go to work that day.
I’ll pray for them and their families. I’ll also implore God to help this country remember that our differences bind us just as much as our similarities. Our disagreements are our strength. Our dialogue is our power.
That’s what makes each of us a true American.

Life’s biggest challenge is doing the little things

Life’s biggest challenge is doing the little things
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 09.07.2007
There’s a safety pin in a urinal at the office.
I’m not sure why it rests in the toilet water there or how it hasn’t flushed down the drain. I don’t know why it remains there at least six months after it arrived.
I take that second part back. I know why it’s remained; no one wants to reach into the toilet water to retrieve it and throw it away.
It really wouldn’t be that difficult for me to pick it out and toss it in the garbage can. I could wash my hands thoroughly afterward. It wouldn’t be that difficult for someone else to do it either. Yet it remains there, and the only time I think about it is when I’m doing what you do in front of a urinal.
Recently I realized how many safety pins are in the urinals of my life.
They’re these simply solved problems that never get addressed. They seem hardly worth the effort, but they bother you over time. You waste hours thinking, “I should work on that some day.”
Some just take some elbow grease. For instance, I like to keep copies of old bills. I have a good filing system, but I’m not always good at keeping up with it. If I file a bill as soon as I pay it, there’d be no hard work to it. Instead, I tend to grow piles of bills and have to take an hour to file three months’ worth of old bills. These piles of bills grow around the floor in my home office.
Others are changing your habits. We go out to eat way too often, especially considering everyone in our house save the newborn baby is a decent cook. There’s a stocked freezer and cupboard. The food’s not always that great when you hit a fast-food place, and the atmosphere will never rival gathering around our dinner table.
Another safety pin is my personal fitness. I’m fairly healthy, but I could take better care of myself. I’m not sure I like the looks of doubt when I tell people I weighed 140 pounds my senior year of high school. I could easily spend 15 minutes a day using those weights I’ve lugged from town to town over the last 10 years.
My e-mail habits are bad. I’ll receive e-mail and file it away until I have time to write a good answer. Then it may be weeks before I respond to a dear friend from college. Real friends don’t wait months before answering e-mail.
I should do more to live my faith. It’s good to go to church and try to take what you learn into your everyday life. It’s better to go out, volunteer and share your gifts with others.
I don’t see my parents enough. I moved back to Ohio to spend more time with them, yet I might not see them for a month or two in a row. I really should make that 40-minute trip at least once a month.
I should tell more people that I love them. Sure, they should know by my actions. It never hurts to say it though, and there are few things in life as sweet as hearing it.
Sometimes the easiest things to change in life become the hardest ones to do.
I seriously doubt I’ll put my hand into the urinal anytime soon. Maybe it’s best that it stays there as a reminder of all of these other safety pins in the urinals of life that need just one thing: action.