Controlling Interests

(c) 2011 Trina Lambert

Some years teach us more than we ever hoped to know.

The year I learned my father’s cancer had returned, this time lodging in a lethal location, was the year I discovered just how little real control I had over most things beyond my outlook. My daughter was experiencing seizures we hadn’t been able to manage yet and my son’s AD/HD and his personality were railing against a school day structured the exact opposite of how his brain operated for him at that age.

Yet, I thought I lived in a world where planes did not fly into buildings and cause them to crumble to the ground.

Nonetheless, when the news outside my own home crashed into my home, it felt almost surreal to try to understand that so many homes on the other side of our country were now broken up with private loss. Yet these were fellow Americans who had gone to work or taken a plane trip—and then just fallen from the sky.

For whatever reason, I did not focus on anger even though none of them had really fallen from the sky—they had been forced to the ground by people whose hatred claimed to justify the unjustifiable.

No, what I felt on those early crisp blue September mornings—when the skies remained eerily silent and flags had been planted up and down our street—was our collective sadness. I, like others around the country, gathered in community in prayer services. Our togetherness raised in me a sense of hope. As distracted as I was by my own worries, the actions of so many to restore what it meant to be American buoyed me up.

Maybe I lost track of it all as I needed to retain focus on my own loved ones’ problems, but I don’t know how soon I started losing faith in our ability to work together. Maybe it was as simple as weekly driving by a house displaying a large hand-painted sign that declared “We will never forget—or forgive!” and starting to discover we weren’t as united as I had believed.

Ten years later, I am an expert in knowing that so much of control in life is an illusion. My father’s cancer took him six months after 9/11. Schooling for my son has remained challenging, despite his giftedness. My daughter’s seizures were finally controlled, only to be followed by bouts of depression that continue to linger. Our country has had troops fighting this subversive war of terrorism for most of this past decade.

In some ways I’ve learned to accept those situations—or at least to keep myself focused on what I can and cannot control about them, saving my actions for those that might bring about change.

But what breaks my heart most is how divided we as a nation have become. We dishonor those who did not get to return home that day when we cannot treat each other with respect and work on compromise. The people who removed our collective illusions of control that bright September morning did not believe in compromise either. Despite reports to the contrary, our founding fathers did actually compromise on many matters when they put together this country.

We can attempt to be prepared for outside attacks, but we cannot control what those people think about us. However, as long as we continue to divide ourselves, the terrorists have won—by setting us on the path to our own self-destruction.

Wouldn’t it be great if this were the year when we learned that what we can control is how we treat our own fellow citizens, even when we disagree?