Personally, I find that the yearly 'Never Forget' chants have become kind of toxic. Yes, we need to honor the dead and those who sacrificed so much for our country, but conversely, we need to allow the wounds to heal. We need to move on collectively as a country, the best we can, and put that horrible day behind us, instead of re-opening those psychological wounds every single September 11th. We can't keep seeing the documentaries of people jumping from the 105th floor to escape the fire every year.There has to be a degree of closure in there, but I think that can vary depending on the person. But for someone who had a relative die in the attacks, I don't know how you could ever move on or adjust to life afterwards. I physically can't wrap my mind around it.
I watched a documentary of archival footage last night, and the interesting thing I noticed was how everyday people processed what was happening, how you saw a myriad of human emotions on display. Some people turned to anger, calling for bombings and retaliation, some people prayed, some grabbed their cameras to try to document or preserve what they were seeing and feeling. People handled the stress very differently.
It's also one thing to read about an event in history, and a whole other to experience one. I watched the north tower fall, with my own eyes, via a live feed of NYC. My grandparents witnessed the JFK assassination. You can read about it, after the fact, but to have lived through it is a whole different affair.