I loved V for Vendetta. I will argue that the graphic novel was much better than the movie, but that’s the same argument everyone uses in similar situations. When I think of today, all I can think of is the famous line from it: remember, remember the fifth of November. I like my version better. Today is an important day in American history, and an important day in my own, as today my little one has turned one. My once little burrito baby is now a toddler. Today of all days, I celebrate my son’s birthday while the rest of the country seems to be mourning.

On a day of such sadness, we need to look at the positives. It’s fine to remember the past, but we can’t dwell on it. The best part about living through a tragedy is gaining strength to move on from it. It’s 12 years, and I would like to think we’re better people. We’re not, but I would like to think we are. We’re stronger than we were, if nothing else. Just like the Boston tragedy this year, we learned that when tragedy strikes people join together to help out their fellow-man. It’s after that, the camaraderie fades away and it becomes a dog eat foreigners world. We’ve grown from it, we’ve become more paranoid and we’ve survived.

The last part was the most important of my statement: we’ve survived. We survived 9/11 and we’ve survived the Boston Bombing and the tragedies that followed within days after. We are survivors. We don’t sit around being victims. We stand up and live our lives anyways. What we need to do is to not look at this day as one that may or may not be forgotten; it won’t be forgotten. We need to look at this day as something that happened in our past that made us a nation of strength. We join together today but it’s important that we treat this like our own lives: we accept the past as the past and focus on what we are today. So while there are events all over the television to commemorate today, we should remember that we’re different now. Also, we should point out that remember today doesn’t mean that we need to rewatch the incident repeatedly all day long. Living it once was enough for me.