Nine Years Ago (Till) Today

September 11, 2001. I have not forgotten. I will never forget.

Growing up, there was a boy that my mother used to compare us to all the time. I don't think I ever actually met him, but he always won out. Why can't you be more like.... A man now, full of potential and Jamaican fire, he was in the World Trade Centre on September 11, overachieving as per usual. He was meant to impact our island. He was meant to impact the world.

But he never made it out.

I still pray for you, I pray for your father, I pray for your family. Blessed Love my brother.

Blessed Love to all who died, or who lost Someone that day. Or in the aftermath. Whether they died in a tower in New York or in the Pentagon in DC, whether from an IED in Iraq or from a broken heart in Baltimore (or Japan, China, India, Africa, Jamaica...this thing was worldwide. They hit the WORLD Trade Center). Blessed Love.

Blessed Love to all the Americans who have suffered, and continue to suffer through it. Blessed love to all those who have fought, to all those who died - whether physically, spiritually, emotionally. To all the families of those in the armed forces worldwide who have sacrificed their sanctity, their sanity, their peace of mind and life and who knows what else so that others might live. Blessed Love.

Blessed love to all the innocent Iraqis and others who ended up getting drawn into a conflict not of their making, and paid - and continue to pay - with their lives for it. You are not forgotten, tho I'm sure that many of you would beg to disagree. Blessed Love.

Blessed Love to all those Guantanamo and other detainees - the innocent ones who, prior to their detention, didn't know al-qaeda from grease paper. But, because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time...with the wrong look...have had their lives turned upside down, inside out, never to be the same again. Blessed love to you. I pray for your healing.

Blessed love to all those who, because of fatally flawed foreign policies that meant well, but were reactionary - based on anger and fear rather than on fact and right reasoning, have had their lives nigh near destroyed. Who will have their lives under attack. Blessed love to you too. I pray for you as well. But if man nuh dead nuh call im duppy. While there is life there is hope, so if you're reading this that means that life and hope are still yours.

Blessed love to an entire generation of people who have been born into and raised on a diet of fear because of the actions of a few, one bright blue nine year old September morning. A generation comprised of both the West and the East. I pray for you too that, though you may have been born into fear, you don't allow it to mould you....to shape your lives, your future, your destiny.

And to those misguided souls who took their hate to a whole other level, murdering 2,996 people from countless nationalities, from all kinds of backgrounds. Responsible for the deaths of all those others whose physical bodies have been lost and will be lost as a result - muslims, jews, christians, agnostics....People who didn't know you, had nothing to do with you or your vendetta. To you, the misguided few and to all those who have since joined you - the blood of the many is on your hands and, like Abel's blood, it cries up to God for justice.

And God nah sleep.

I pray for you all too. It's not a prayer borne of dread but, rather, of concern. Because regardless of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the source of your original anger, hate and fear (definitely fear...tyranny of this magnitude is rarely ever borne of anything else, regardless of whether the perpetrators recognise it or not), you are now the most lost of them all.

I wish I knew what to say to you. I wish I was deep like that. But I'm not, so I don't know what to say. Except to encourage you to take a few minutes and put all the emotion aside, put all the hype aside, put all the voices of others aside. Put all the past hurts and experiences aside for a few moments, and in the quiet that follows examine yourself and this cause that you are fighting, killing and training others to kill and die for. Examine it and yourself purely and objectively. What are you really fighting for? Why are you here? Are you really going to live your life as a reaction? Why have you allowed this thing that you hate to control you? Because you are being controlled. It is impossible to hate without being controlled by that very thing that you are repulsed by. Free up yourself. Don't live your life as a reaction.

Blessed Love to everyone worldwide. Tell your friends and loved ones exactly how much they mean to you. Don't be shy with it. Why be shy with it? Don't set yourself up for regrets. I'm going to try to do the same too :).

To God be the glory. May He grant us wisdom and strength. He has already granted us Love, it is now up to us as to whether we're going to take it.

Take it.

One Love.


"Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For,
"Whoever would love life
and see good days
must keep his tongue from evil
and his lips from deceitful speech.
He must turn from evil and do good;
he must seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." "
- Peter, a disciple of Jesus Christ, as recorded in 1 Peter 3:9-12

(In context: 1 Peter 3:8-21)