Ok, let me preface this by saying that I beg you to follow these rules... I have no standing here to police these forums, but I do run several others and I know how this stuff goes, so please play nice.

Rule 1 - Please do not reply to anyone, just state your opinion and move on

Rule 2 - Please do not get all crazy political, we have heard it all before and we get it... on all sides.

Rule 3 - this does not just apply to the 9/11 tragedy, I want to know EVERYTHING that has guided your life in the last 5 years and if some of that was directly affected by the attack itself, please explain the tie-in.

With that said.... let me beign:

I have learned that there is WAY more to life than death and taxes. There is also way, way more to claiming a political party then just following the "team playbook" you have to listen and read and choose the position that is right for you personally. On occasion that reasearch will cause you to change your opinion... and in some cases it will cause you (no, not me Pat) to change parties completely! Oh yeah... extremism in ANY form is bad... and usually greatly desctructive.

I have also learned that life as a parent is one helluva challenge. I would like to think that I have tried to become a better husband and father, but that is not for me to decide.

I have come to believe that the US really needs to focus much, much less on other countries and quite a bit more on itself. I also think that it is possible to make terrorism go away on it's own, but the country and the government could never handle the steps to make that work (no I am not going to explain that further).

I have learned that I am an inhernetly lazy person and I am working very hard to get over that problem.

I have learned that my family (parents and siblings) is WAY more jacked up than I could have ever imagined.... and it is far beyond repair.

Finally, what is probably one of the most important things I have learned in the past five years is that there are VERY few things in life more important than true, honest, and reliable friends.

My main lesson of life since 9-11 has been that while we neeed to live our lives with some purpose, we all need to prepare for death, at least in some measure. I'm not just talking mentally/spiritually preparing ourselves for the fact that we are going to die someday, I'm talking about taking some steps to unclutter our lives and do things that will lessen the overwhelming mess to those we may leave behind. There is always someone left who becomes bogged down with tending to the details of the messes we leave behind us when we die. We should do what we can to make it easier for them.

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