September 11th Baby

Written on the first anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City. A single small infant refutes and trivializes the terrorists lives and actions.

Friends of mine had a baby yesterday. September 11, 2002. Exactly one year after fanatics piloted four airliners full of human beings into the ground and three buildings.

With that single birth, the entire objective of the fanatics has been nullified. That one small, wet, shrieking, confused infant has shown, through the simple act of being born, how absurd and impossible the hijackers goal was.

Life is resilient. All forms of life have an immune system that works constantly, sleeplessly, against any invader that would terminate that life. Bacteria are tolerated when they are kept in balance, but when a certain type of bacteria gets out of hand, the immune system is there to beat it back into submission.

One of the goals of the terrorists was to kill as many people as possible. Through his birth, Jack has demonstrated in the most natural and eloquent way possible that this was a pointless exercise that resulted in showing just how powerless the terrorists really are. The world, as an organism, replaced the lives lost in these terrorist acts in less than 5 minutes.

Jack and his world-siblings are being raised on a planet that views these terrorists as deranged and perverted messiahs for a sick clique of selfish people.

The second goal of the terrorists was to put the fear in America, and show Americans the error of their ways.

The United States has had an immigration rate of almost 3,000 immigrants a day since 1970. These people come to the US for a variety of reasons, but the most common reason is FREEDOM.

Immigrants leave their home and relocate to America to seek freedom. The freedom to practice whatever their religion may be, the freedom to try to gain a status beyond what their birth would allow them in their home country, the freedom to pursue whatever their goals may be.

They immigrate to America to take advantage of their potential: to rise above their limited station and become something more and achieve more than what tradition or the situation in their country dictates they can achieve.

From that perspective, people have said that America is everyone’s second country.

To become an American you need not practice a particular religion.

To become an American you do not have to eat a certain diet.

To become an American you need not have an affiliation to any political party.

To become an American you need not bring anything other than the belief in an ideal. Accept the American credo, and you are an American. As the Economist magazine said, “America is an immigrant’s land, open to anyone of any race or culture who accepts the ideas … on which it was founded.”

Here the terrorists have failed as well: you cannot destroy an idea.

The infant, Jack, will be raised on the beliefs of tolerance and acceptance of others. He will get to speak his first words twice: once in his mother’s tongue, Hungarian, and once in his father’s tongue, English. Everyone will remember the first day he said an English word. His world is multi-cultural from the day he was born. He is a child of the world…one who will make a home wherever he goes, because the day he entered the world he already had two countries.

As he grows up, Jack will learn about the events that are commemorated worldwide on his birthday. He will learn about people in France who lit two tall candles in their windows to commemorate the Twin Towers that he will never see in person. He will hear about men in Egypt who knelt on their prayer carpet and prayed for the people who died that day. He will watch his parents as they take a moment of silence to remember where they were and what they were doing that day in 2001.

And Jack will be told of a group of misguided men. Men who had short, vicious lives filled with hatred and intolerance. Men who championed the causes of bigotry, prejudice, and fanaticism, while plotting to kill those who they accused of the same faults. Men who will be remembered solely for their inability to understand the most basic tenet of every philosophy in the world: you cannot kill an idea.

I believe Jack will mature into a world where he will have a difficult time understanding what these people were thinking. He will have the privilege of growing up in a multi-cultural family and will have all the advantages that come to those with an open mind. With a journalist/author father, and a lawyer mother, he will also get the proper mental toolset to begin with.

And the best part of this all is that Jack is not even an American. He is Canadian and Hungarian!

So congratulations to John and Erika for bringing their small, wet, shrieking bit of future hope into the world, and congratulations to Jack for choosing to make 9/11 into a good day for me, for the rest of my life.

By Christian Jacobsen. All rights reserved.