I know, I know...another "where I was on 9/11" story is the last thing most people want to hear over half a decade later.  I won't go too much into that part.  Although I do need to get a bit of information out before I do get to my point.  I'm one of the youngest members of the BEL.com crew and six years ago this day, I was a week into my first year of college.  I went to study music at a private liberal arts college in Illinois and it was a wide world opened up to me with so much changing in such a small time frame.  Then it happened.  I woke up one morning and people in my dorm were roaming the hallways asking each other what was happening and where we were supposed to go.  I was very confused and flipped on CNN to see what every other American saw that day.  (No need to get into details we all know so well.)  My already changing life had just taken a huge turn and hit the gas.  If I thought before that everything was changing, now EVERYTHING was changing.

Skip forward a couple years and I can barely remember how it was to wait at the terminal for loved ones to arrive or not have to practically undress at the airport security check points.  NYC had been cleaned up and lives were finally piecing back together. 

In a couple more years, I graduated from that school and moved to the East Coast to be part of the BEL.com family.  Now, the world I knew before today six years ago seems like a fairytale, a fictional world that existed in stories of my childhood.  Not to say that things are worse, I think these things helped in many ways bring people together and make better those who were already good.  I wasn't around for WWII or Vietnam and Desert Storm was early enough in my childhood to almost seem like a TV show, so this really defined our generation.  Many of my peers are in undisclosed locations around the world doing their part in protecting our country.  I know there are many things we all complain about everyday (including myself), like the potholes, taxes, the current administration and what that lady from the Dixie Chicks said this week.  We complain about our jobs, road construction and that jerk on I-95 that cut us off on our way to a movie.  No one is asking anyone to change, but I submit to you, web surfers and BEL.com clients, a challenge: for one day, just forget about it.  Forget all the things you find yourself complaining about and use that time to just be silent, pray or write a letter/e-mail of gratitude to someone you know in the military...if for nothing else, as a small token of rememberance to everyone affected by 9/11.  I am almost certain this small act will actually benefit you in return.  Just for a day, 24 hours in a row, just be happy.  If it's too late for today, start 12:01am 9/12/2007.  After that, return to the life you know, but you don't know how it will change you, and just think, if even half of the people in the world were all happy, just for day, how much that would change the world.