By BJ Schecter
Managing Editor

As an athlete growing up - or maybe just as a guy - I’ve always lived by the motto that if you step on my turf or disrespect me, you’ll pay. I’ve always defended my friends and loved ones like I’ve defended my home court. Respond first and ask questions later. Swift action is always best, I contended. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve learned otherwise.

The reshaping of my attitude has been a gradual process and it’s taken a while, but it’s something I’ve tried to do in order to better myself. You see, we can always improve, but in order to do so, we have to make the effort and be willing to acknowledge and learn from our flaws.

Like most Americans, I was outraged by the unspeakable acts of Sept.11th. You should have heard my rants: bomb Afghanistan; bomb the entire Middle East; don’t ever allow foreigners into our country; and arrest and deport anyone of Arab decent. Get rid of them all!

I know, now how irrational those thoughts seem. But it took weeks of introspection to truly understand how ridiculous I sounded. Think about it. Have you ever hated an entire school because they are your rivals or written off an entire gender because you had a fight or breakup with your significant other? The same type of thing was going on here, only on a much grander scale.

What’s the solution? Well, it’s not cut and dried and there’s no secret formula. It all starts with you. Now I’m not saying we are to blame for the attacks on our country, but how we react to them says a lot about who we are. It wasn’t until I put the shoe on the other foot that I came to realize that many Arab Americans felt just as terrible as I did about what happened on Sept.11th. And me yelling and screaming or encouraging violence or deportation would certainly not solve anything.

If we are ever to fully recover from this we must first drop our holier than thou attitude. These types of atrocities happen all over the world and yes, they can happen to us. We may be the world economic leader and have more resources and wealth than most nations, but that doesn’t entitle us to anything. If we want peace and harmony, we have to work hard to achieve it like everyone else.

The onus is now on us. So, take an interest in other cultures to understand how and why others feel the way we do about us. If we continue to jump to conclusions or make generalizations we not only won’t solve the problem, we will only make it worse. Now, I’m not saying embrace our enemy; that’s bit too idealistic for me. But I encourage you to read, learn and be inquisitive about other cultures.

I grant you that this is all easier said than done, but in order to promote change you have to be willing to change yourself. Each and every one of us can be better if we try. It’s all about attitude. If you’re arrogant or go through life with sense of entitlement, you may never learn. But if you open yourself up to the world and allow yourself to see and really try to understand what is out there, then the possibilities are endless.

The vicious attacks on our country have done so much harm. It’s now up to us to use this as a rallying point to come together and do something good. In order for us to improve as a country we have to first improve as people. So try and learn something every day and open yourselves up to the world around you. How we respond and where we go from here is up to us. So I challenge you to think, learn and do what’s right. Before you do something you might regret, stop for a second, picture yourself in a mirror and ask yourself if you like what you see.