This year, Washington University didn’t have a remembrance service for Sept. 11. Why, you might ask? Was this not a tragic event? Was this not a period of grief completely unmatched by any other in our short lifetimes? Yes, it was that and so much more, but Wash. U. not having an official memorial was a good thing because it shows how we, both as a community and a country, are moving on.

I know of no person who says we should not remember 9/11. There was too much life lost, too many families broken. It caused a fundamental shift in the country that has led to, among other things, 12 years of war.

But with Wash. U. not having a remembrance event, it shows that we are no longer so viscerally pained by the thought of 9/11. It means that it no longer causes the same hurt and angst when we think of it.

And this is a good thing! Think of all the tragedies the United States has been through since its inception: the destruction of Washington, D.C., in the War of 1812, the Alamo, the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, Vietnam, the Oklahoma City bombing, not to mention the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and various other public figures.

We never forget these events. We learn about them in school; we think on how horrible they were. But at the same time, the pain of their occurrence is no longer part of our lives. We have memorials on the “big years”—the 10s, 50s, 100s—and the country moves on.

So, what has happened with all those events will also happen with 9/11. And the pain and the fear and the loss won’t be so bad. And as that goes away, the country will be better for it. 9/11 prompted increased security and prompted 12 years of war, and it did that because we, as a people, were afraid. We didn’t know what would happen next, and we made decisions that, in hindsight, were probably mistakes.

Is the correct thing to be so burdened by the pain of 9/11 that we keep it with us and continue to let it make decisions about the future of the country, to continually remember its horror and make ourselves afraid and angry over and over?

No, it is better to let it move to the back of the national psyche. Let it become another horrible event that we remember, that we think on every year or every few years, that we tell our children about how scary it all was way back when.

I grew up in Manhattan. I remember that day. I remember stocking up on food because nobody knew how long the bridges would be closed. I remember thinking I saw a plane in the air after both towers had fallen. I remember seeing the smoke from my bedroom window. I can’t forget 9/11. It’ll likely be the most important thing I ever live through. But that does not mean that I shouldn’t be able to move on, to have it hurt less and less over time.

Nobody is ever going to forget 9/11 or what it meant. We’ve come much too far for that. So Wash. U. choosing not to have a remembrance event wasn’t a slap in the face to New Yorkers or a signal that they don’t remember what it was like on that day 12 years ago.

It was a sign that perhaps 9/11 doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. A sign that perhaps, we are finally moving on, as tough as that can be.