Today is always an interesting day. Since before I can remember, September 11th has rattled my family more than most. As a kid, I remember my grandpa speaking to the local newspaper about his years at Marsh McLennan. My grandma would tell me how he sometimes fell asleep on the train leaving New York City and needed an alarm — or a phone call — to wake him before his stop.

I was only a baby when 9/11 happened. I don’t remember the day itself, but I remember my grandpa crying every single year on the anniversary. He carried survivor’s guilt — a weeklong vacation to Canada had saved his life but wiped out so many of his coworkers’. I remember him at the 9/11 memorial, quietly reading the names, tears on his face as he stood where his office once was.

Usually, this is the day I cry for him, for his grief. But this year feels different. This year, the grief is layered.

From what I’ve been told, 9/11 brought the entire nation to its knees. The senseless killing of innocent people shook us to our core.

Twenty-four years later, violence feels louder and closer than ever — and yet we are quieter. We wake up to phones full of stabbings, mass shootings, genocides, hospital bombings, violence against healthcare workers — and still go to work, to school, to the bar, carrying the quiet thought, what if it’s me this time?

Violence doesn’t seem to cripple us anymore. Each killing becomes just another headline. I think about my history classes and wonder if this is what the “hippies” felt like protesting Vietnam, or what enslaved people felt when news of another hanging spread. We like to think history is behind us — that we’ve evolved, grown more compassionate, more educated, more advanced. But somehow, with all this advancement, we’ve grown numb.

We lie in bed, staring at glowing screens, watching seconds-long clips of the worst of humanity. We not only read about violence — we watch it unfold, streamed straight into our hands. And yet we scroll.

We scroll past murdered children, college students running from gunfire, healthcare workers held at gunpoint. We scroll past genocides we swore would “never happen again,” past rhetoric that turns humans into enemies.

We scroll past doctors begging insurance companies to let their patients receive life saving treatments, past families poisoned by pollution, past tragedy after tragedy. We might donate to a GoFundMe, repost a story, whisper “that’s so sad”… and then we scroll on. We go to sleep with these images behind our eyelids, feeling small and powerless as the world unravels.

My grandpa was a talker — about politics, books, his kids, his life. He believed words mattered. As I reflect today, I realize that silence is the enemy. Voices matter. Not just comments on Instagram or tweets into the void, but real, human voices — with breath and weight and story behind them.

I know I’m not the only one who feels lost right now, unsure what to say in the middle of so much chaos. It feels like there isn’t enough compassion to go around. The world is fractured. But maybe the only way to mend it is with our collective voices.

And yet, tomorrow morning, just like so many others, I know I’ll wake up, pick up my phone… and scroll.