With the 22nd anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, now behind us, it’s perhaps a good time to pause and think about the defining moments in our lives, for our community closer to home, for the world in general and in our own lives. Everything can change in an instant.

For those of us who lived through that particular day – and it can feel a little strange to realize there are grown people who were not even born yet – one thing I think we all share is remembering where we were when we learned about it.

I was a 21-year-old student at the University of North Alabama, and I was in my dorm room getting ready for my first class. I didn’t usually turn on the television while getting ready, but that day I did.

At first, I thought I had stumbled across a “disaster movie.”

After a few minutes, I began thinking how it felt “awfully real” for a movie, and then I realized it wasn’t a movie at all. The first tower had been hit, and I was seeing the moments directly after. My next reflex was to think that it “must” be an accident. A terrible accident.

It was no accident.

The realization that that I was seeing something both real and intentional was chilling. I had never felt just that way before. Things like that don’t happen here. Things like that didn’t happen here.

But that’s what we always like to think, isn’t it – that unfortunately, bad things happen, but not so close to home.

Not that you would wish it to happen at all, but something that unexpected, that serious and that worrisome about what it might mean for the future, can be hard to come to terms with, especially when it’s a whole different reality from the one you were living in the day before.

Pretty much on autopilot, I texted my dad and made my way to class. My teacher was teaching as if nothing had happened. Perhaps she didn’t know yet? Oh, but she did, but she decided English should go on with only two or three dismissive words of comment.

I was appalled at her cavalier attitude, and I sat in the back of the class in shock, ignoring whatever she was going on about.

Later that day, I made my way to my journalism class with Dr. Martin. It was a good place to be. He said that of course we weren’t going to have class but that if we wanted to stay, we were welcome to do so. It didn’t feel like a time to be alone, and there was comfort in being around others.

During another part of the day, I was in the cafeteria, and many of us were watching the televisions for news. It was a surreal feeling. I suppose this is the “Pearl Harbor” moment of our generation – something you can’t fully understand unless you were there.

In the weeks that followed, that awful footage was replayed over and over until I could watch it no more. Something had changed that day. Maybe a lot of things.

One of them was feeling decidedly less safe, a very unsettling condition to find yourself in – but perhaps in some ways it has brought us closer together in realizing how fragile life is and how it can all change so fast. Perhaps the silver lining, if such an event can have one, is not to take things for granted. Appreciate everything that matters along the way and cherish who and what you love.