In the case of what will forever be known as “9/11” the five year anniversary apparently has a special significance in the national psyche. The town is abuzz with talk of 9/11.

Five years ago the country awakened to a nightmare, as if the unbelievable and macabre nighttime fantasies that inhabit the inner workings of our minds had suddenly come to life.

At 7:15 that morning, I was preparing my usual bowl of cereal when Jayne walked in from the living room to tell me that there was some “crazy shit going on”.

Crazy shit indeed.

When I reflect on what I saw and heard of the terrible events of that day, I am especially moved by the stories and images of those trapped on the upper floors of the towers.

Hovering in a doomed tower a quarter-mile up in the sky they were separated from their lives and homes, from the world they knew, by a raging fire crawling slowly, inexorably up toward them, even as it sapped the strength of the metal that would soon collapse underneath them.

The smoke and fire coming up to devour them was nothing more than the manifestation of the violence and hatred that has been a malignancy on the human spirit since time began - the fears of our collective nightmares come to life.

This manifestation, this expression of hatred, stood between these poor souls and the lives they left below.

For me, the most poignant expression of the human drama of that day was how some of these people chose to personally end theirs. Instead of allowing the fire of hatred consume them, they found someone - whether a colleague, friend, or complete stranger, I will never know – and , hand in hand, in one last gesture of human companionship, jumped together off the burning tower and made their final journey home.

It is a law of physics that, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Now, five years later, the best image I can take away from the anniversary is of a television interview of a young fifteen-year-old woman. Many fifteen-year-olds are still children, but this person has survived the ordeal of losing her father in the collapse of the World Trade Center five years ago. Those five years has bestowed wisdom beyond her young years. Through her pain she has forged a determination of goodwill and kindness to all she encounters. It is what she has taken away from her personal tragedy: “I’m lucky; I am lucky in so many ways…”

If this young woman is one of the lucky ones, then I am reminded how so extraordinarily lucky I am to enjoy the life that I do. For me, the death and destruction of that day are but an abstraction. I can still afford to nurse the small flame of hope and the naïve belief that the world can change.

If, fifteen years from now, the child that lost her father to the arbitrary violence of that day has not abandoned her determination then there is hope for this world.

If not, what then?

 

And so I leave this little essay with my thoughts written down shortly after that day in September, 2001:

 

We live in troubling times. This was brought home to us with a vengeance the morning of September 11^th. But it didn’t start with the tragedy of that day. Americans have been shocked out of their complacency and sense of invulnerability.

We have always been vulnerable. Still, it is a little disquieting, knowing that there are people out there, perhaps even close-by, that want to kill you - “Kill Americans, wherever they are.”

I was born at the height of the Cold War; around that time the message was, “We will bury you”.

The apocalypse of mutual assured destruction dominated my world as a child. But with the fall of the Soviet Bloc, we lost our archenemy, to which we had been locked in a bitter struggle.

We say we want a better world, one where enemies no longer engage in madness and violence to achieve questionable or ill-defined goals. Where people and governments of the world realize that some sort of co-existence is required for survival.

Sometimes it seems that progress is made. Democracy and freedom, while very imperfect, is established. Slavery is abolished. Ideas and governments based on Hate and Fear are vanquished, for a time at least.

Yet we always seem to be drawn back into the bitter clash of opposing ideas and cultures.

Opposites attracted and drawn to each other in some violent, apocalyptic struggle of ideals. Freedom versus oppression; Open versus closed; Enlightened versus dogmatic; Life versus death… 

The seeds of the struggle lie within each of us.

Yet, as victims of horrific acts of violence killing thousands of innocent citizens, we have no choice but to respond.

The classic response, the typical response, the “normal” response, is to respond in kind with force and violence. To kill those that would kill us. It’s one of the fundamental instincts in all life – self-preservation.

Except that we are a species of self-inflicted wounds.

We are one species; we can’t get around that very basic fact.

Just as it was when I was a child, with an arsenal of Mutual Assured Destruction looming overhead, our success as a species seems in doubt.

We have found our ultimate enemy, and we are they…

We talk of “getting back to normal”.

Why would we want to do a thing like that?

Maybe it’s time to wake up - for something different.

We’ll need to stop killing each other first…