I can't believe that it's been five years.

I was on campus at UCF later that morning and there was a movie screen set up in the student union. Thousands of kids gathered around watching it all unfold. The one thing that will probably always stick out in my mind (outside of the transparent horror that was evident on the faces of everyone there) were the military recruiters signing up lines of kids.

I'm still not sure exactly how I feel about that. I think if nothing else though, thats what really drove home the notion that things were going to be massively different in our lives than we had previously thought.

It's not just a series of events that occurred five Septembers ago. 9/11 didn't end that day. We're still in the midst of 9/11 now, and I believe our generation could very well spend our lives in 9/11. Every time I hear the media say "post-9/11", I question what that really means.

I hope that today, as the memorials and the tributes unfold, people remember their vow to "never forget". Everything that we've experienced isn't about revenge and retribution, it's about a philosophy. What kind of lives do we want our children to have, and how do we want to ensure that they have it? Is it through war? Discussion? Education? Diplomacy? Containment? Denial? The reality is that the answer isn't black and white and it won't fit into a campaign sound bite or a blog post.

What's surprising the most to me is that I'm not sure if this discussion has really even started to take place. We're 5 years away, and it feels like we're just as lost as we were the next day.