Stand Beside Her, and Guide Her

I don’t want this to be another cliché piece about where I was when I heard about the planes hitting the towers.  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter if you were in Manhattan or Minnesota.  No matter where we were, we were all in the same place.  A place of shock and fear.  A terrible place where our innate sense of security was absolutely trampled.

What matters is where we are now.  President Obama declared today a National Day of Service, and I think he expressed my own feelings when he said

"On a day when others sought to sap our confidence, let us renew our common purpose, let us remember how we came together as one nation, as one people, as Americans united. Such sense of purpose need not be a fleeting moment.”

And he’s right. In the months following, everyone was flying a flag on their front porch, sporting a patriotic bumper sticker, wearing that requisite lapel pin. Everyone was talking about patriotism, and freedom, and what it means to be an American.

I can honestly say that I have never felt so American in my life as I do now, as an AmeriCorps volunteer. This is what being an American means to me.  I truly believe at the core of this country is the underlying sense of responsibility to do right by each other.  To take care of our ourselves by taking care of each other. 

I know that means something different to everyone.  What I want it to mean is that you do something for someone today.  Take that sense of purpose you felt on September 12, 2001 and renew it.  Follow through on it, eight years later.  That might mean installing sheetrock for a single mother stuggling to give her son a safe home.  Or maybe it means donating a few bucks to the Red Cross.  It could mean helping someone pick up the change they dropped. 

No matter what you choose to do, it means that you remember, today and everyday, what it means to be an American, and to cherish it.