The tower shuddered with the impact of the plane. For a moment, it swayed as pieces of debris began falling from the heights. Then, in one destructive moment, the foundation gave way and the tower collapsed inward, toppling over on itself and spreading the remains across the floor. Blocks were heaped in masses with the crumpled nose of a paper airplane protruding from the rubble. Little Megan stood close by pleased that her airplane had finally taken down this once proud skyscraper.
Watching her play, something long forgotten had awakened inside me as the poorly constructed tower of lego blocks, molded by the hands of a five-year-old, lay in smoldering ruins on the kitchen floor. The memory had been dormant for years, waiting to be released once more by some abstract sight or thought. I was sitting again in Mrs. Stempien's 10th grade homeroom surrounded by those drab, brown curtains and dull tile floors typical of the region's under-funded high schools. With every eye glued to an antique television set, the room was left utterly speechless. Those flaming towers, tinted blue on the old screen, were burned in my memory forever as they crashed to the earth.
Similar to my own experience with the infamous assassination of John F. Kennedy, the defining moment in history for many of my elders, she has heard only faint legends of twin towers from ages past. She will never know precisely how I felt that day sitting uncharacteristically silent at my creaky, wooden desk. There is much pain in the world that she does not yet know.
Recently, someone criticized me and my youth, questioning my ability to understand anything about the world. After all, I'm not even thirty yet, how could I really know anything?
But the truth is, I have seen the world in all its beauty, beauty that quietly uncovered my village with the first light of dayspring as it emerged from looming Himalayan peaks. I have seen the world in all its pain, weeping with Mother Theresa's nuns as they cared for leprous, dying Indians who, their whole lives, had known only the street. And I have seen its violence, living amidst the rage of Arab Africans as they angrily fanned the flames of revolution in hopes of a better life.
I have sat at the feet of the great thinkers of history and asked them the hard questions. I have studied the world around me and discovered universal truths that many have rejected and many more will disregard to their destruction. I have known mankind and attentively listened to his hopes and dreams, regrets and hurts. I have become personally acquainted with the world's suffering, that feeling of gasping for air, or a searing heat that comes suddenly upon the body, when the most intense pain breaks through with the news of divorce and separation, growing up with an alcoholic single mother, and a stepfather's rejection after discovering faith in a Savior who was supposed to make everything better right now.
My time on this earth has indeed been short, but I have savored it and squeezed out as much as I could. If today was my last day, I couldn't honestly say I did not know the world. I do know the world, we're just not that well acquainted yet. There is so much more I want to explore; so many more adventures yet to be had that it's almost overwhelming. I'm bursting at the seams with my experience with the world, and yet it's only a drop in the bucket.
I did, in fact, see the towers fall; one day she will have her own towers. One day she will stand in my shoes, somewhere between innocence and adulthood, gathering herself to step into this mystery: a world that she has known, but not nearly well enough.
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