S ix years ago America woke up on a Tuesday morning to a world that had decided to change without its permission.

As we went about our daily routines — the kids, the morning commute — we were stopped in our tracks by a sight that was so shocking it seemed unreal — beyond the scope of our imagination. And like all of history's turning points, nothing would ever be the same.

Sure, there were still kids to get out of bed and a commute to drive, but every day carries a piece of the burden that was laid on this country in the days following September 11, 2001. But what that burden is has changed over the years.

Initially, America's task was to pick itself up from the country's greatest tragedy in modern memory. The world stood with us as we collectively fought to regain our sense of reality and balance. We invaded one country to seek and destroy the people that had claimed over 3,000 American lives and turned our transit system into ammunition for their own cause.

Since then, the burden of 9/11 has changed as it has provided the basis for an unjustified war, state-sanctioned torture, the loss of credibility on the world stage, the erosion of our own civil liberties, the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and cost thousands of Americans and Iraqi civilians their lives.

The tragedy of that day has been used to expedite any number of political goals our representatives have seen fit to achieve. It has been used as a cudgel to beat fear and unquestioning compliance into a populace that once prided itself on its bravery and valor.

That is why the small memorial ceremonies held across the nation on Tuesday are so important. They reach out to us with the reality of that morning and remind us that a tragic human event occurred that day.

That morning, there were no WMDs, and there was no "axis of evil", and no "them vs. us". That morning, Americans stood by and absorbed a violent reality as a group of individuals who were worried that their friends or family could have been caught in the horror and desperately waited to hear from them — rejoicing when the call came or crying when it did not.

It is time to capture that spirit of unity again. When America works together, history has shown that it can accomplish great things. That is now the hope of 9-11; that we may take tragedy and turn it into triumph.

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