Everyone remembers 9/11 — even those of us who weren’t there. 

We have all heard the question: “Where were you on 9/11?” Everyone who watched the attack has a story about the moment they learned America was under attack.

This event reshaped American culture. The famous country singer Alan Jackson released a song following the attacks titled, “Where were you (When the world stopped turning).” Jackson delivered a song that became a message that tries to make sense of the day. He sings, “Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor? Or did you just sit down and cry?”

It has been 24 years since thousands of Americans — those who went to work at the World Trade Center and others who boarded flights that crashed in D.C. and Pennsylvania — never returned home to their spouses, children, parents, and families. Yet many Americans college-aged and younger do not have a story from that day. Despite this, it is an event that has modeled our lives, too.

Those of us born into this post-9/11 world can understand how much the attack changed the world only through secondhand experience. We have sat through long, stressful airport security lines and watched how the “War on Terror” ended with U.S. troops leaving Afghanistan in 2021. We have seen how tragedy can shape a generation and how it becomes ingrained in our memories, just as the 1941 attacks of Pearl Harbor shaped generations before.  

Each year, as 9/11 approaches, I wonder what culturally significant moment has shaped my generation.? Was it the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down the world? Was it the 2020 riots? A presidential candidate’s near assassination? Or has it even taken place? The list could go on, but while we reflect — either on what we remember or not — these events have changed the culture as we have known it.  

I won’t ever be able to tell my children where I was on 9/11, but I will never forget that my dad should’ve been on a flight overseas, but providentially wasn’t. My mom was holding my older brother in her arms while he was sleeping, and they sat in the family room of my childhood home speechless watching the second tower fall.  

My generation carries these heartbreaking memories that are not our own — ones that changed the world. Although they are not our memories, my generation should never forget the events that shaped how we grew up after Sept. 11, 2001.