Can We Ever Go Back?

These days, I go through airport security without thinking much about it. Shoes off. Belt off. Laptop in its own tray. Arms up. Wait for the beep. It’s routine. You want to travel, you comply. That’s just how it works now.

But every so often, I wonder: Did it really have to be like this?

I’m not talking about 9/11 itself. That day happened. It shook the world. But I’m talking about everything that came after. How quickly we adapted to permanent suspicion. How we built this global system of security theatre that doesn’t really make us safer, but makes us feel like we’re "doing something."

Back then, bad things still happened. But we didn’t live like fear was the default. We weren’t handing over water bottles and getting patted down over a belt buckle. And no, giving up my water bottle at the airport doesn’t make me feel safer. It just reminds me how weirdly performative the whole thing has become.

I know this mindset is very much US-driven. TSA, the wars that followed 9/11, the global ripple effect of American fear and policy — it all radiated outward.
Even here in Canada, where I live, we imported a lot of it. It feels like North America adopted a nervous system made in Washington and just ran with it.

And now, it’s just normal. Not because it makes sense, but because we stopped questioning it.

I think that’s what bothers me most. It’s not just about airport checks. It’s about how quickly we internalized fear as a way of life. And how hard it is to walk that back once it’s baked into your systems.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about safety. I absolutely do. But maybe we’ve confused safety with control.
Maybe we need to take a step back and rethink what kinds of controls actually help, and which ones just condition us to submit without thinking.

When were the last major terrorist attacks in North America anyway? Boston? San Bernardino? The threat is still possible, sure. But it’s not like we're under constant siege.
Most recent violence has come from lone actors or domestic ideologies, not the kind of international terror networks that 9/11 made us fear.

So maybe it’s time to put some of that fear behind us. Not to stop caring about safety, but to stop building our entire way of life around worst-case scenarios.

What if we actually tried to move forward in a positive direction?
What if we started asking: What would make our lives better? Instead of just: What might go wrong if we don’t do this? That shift alone could change a lot.