If there was any good that came out of that horrible, horrible day, it was that beautiful sense of connectedness with our fellow citizens, for weeks and months and maybe even a few years afterwards. If only we could use this day of remembrance to get back to prioritizing that deep feeling of compassion and unity, we would honor those who died in the highest way possible.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I have a rare case of writer’s block today. It doesn’t happen to me often. I think that it is related to the time change, and the achingly distracting pinched nerve in my neck. It is said that when you have writer’s block, you should just write. Just write.
It’s times like these when I am feeling sorry for myself that I get a text like I just got from one of my sons, who is in medical school. He said that he just met a patient who survived being trapped in rubble for three days, during 9/11. I have espoused more than once on the blog that just because someone else is having a heart attack, doesn’t mean that your broken toe doesn’t hurt, but sometimes a little dose of perspective comes right when you need it to come, also. There are some hardcore survivors all around us. People’s stories and backgrounds are fascinating and we know so few of them. If you ever want to be truly entertained, ask some questions of a stranger. People are more fascinating than any of us realize, especially if you ask the right questions.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Even still today, there never seems to be adequate words for this day. There is this beautiful poem though, written in 2001, by a New York journalist named Kevin Powell. This poem is called “September 11th: A Poem,” I think that this poem is fittingly beautiful for a poetry day, here on the blog .
Might it be, as my mother said to me on this ugly, sinful day,
That the world is on its last go-round?
Hijacked wild birds strip the sky of its innocent morning breath
Steel towers crumple like playing cards on an uneven metal table
Unrehearsed screams we dare not hear leap from windows
Into the open, bottomless palms of God
I cannot stand to watch life reduce
Itself to powdery dust and soot lathering the devil’s inflamed mouth
But I am fixated on the television anyhow:
Is this what slavery was like?
Is this what the holocaust was like?
Is this what famine is like?
Is this what war is like?
Is this how you felt, dear mother, when King and the two Kennedys were killed?
I want to stitch up the sky, deny humans the right to fly
Cry until my tears have washed hatred
From the mildewed underarms of history
And I want to say to the firemen
Ah, yes, the firemen:
Your husband, your father, your brother, your uncle, your friend
Thank you for speeding to the end of
Your time and thank you for showing us that
Courage is a soul so unselfish it would
Scale a collapsing building to liberate a stranger
Even as your blood relatives wonder if you are alive —
From the remains of this madness
I detect a heartbeat called life
From the remains of this madness
I smell an aroma called love
From the remains of this madness
I embrace a body called humanity
From the remains of this madness
I construct a dream called hope
From the remains of this madness
I will ride the wings of the deceased
Into the clouds, scribble their names on the sun
Erect a memorial to the moon, chant the blues
For New York City, then resurrect a world
Where a new-born rose will jut through the broken concrete.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Like so many of us, I have been completely in awe, and incredibly inspired by the courageous Ukrainian people and their magnificent real-life hero of a leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. I read somewhere that never has the majority of the world felt so united since 9/11. Doesn’t this feeling of unity feel so good? It’s been too long. Why must it take evil and violence for the world to wake up to how good solidarity feels to the majority of us all? A Tweet from Julius Kim (@Julius_Kim) says it best, I think:
“The war in #Ukraine touches the world so deeply because the little guy everywhere is so sick of being pushed around by bullies. Ukraine is us, and we are Ukraine.”
Knowing that this horrific anniversary was around the corner, I scrounged the internet this week, for the following editorial that was widely circulated after the 9/11 attacks. I remember getting it from several people in my email box, all of the way back in 2001. This editorial touched me then, and it touches me now. I will always, always be a proud and grateful American. Take care today, friends. This is a tough day for our country and its citizens.
 | America: The Good Neighbor Editorial by Canadian radio commentator Gordon Sinclair, June 5, 1973 “This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans. I’d like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don’t they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon – not once, but several times – and safely home again. You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don’t think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I’m one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those. Stand proud, America!“ Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love. |
As you age, you come to realize that there are certain traumatic moments, and surreal time periods in life, that you will never, ever be able to completely forget. These sensations and memories are particularly amplified when everyone you know has been affected to at least some degree, and is hurting along with you. We are living through one of these types of time periods right now. We were devastatingly scorched by one of those time periods back in September of 2001.
9/11 was a horrible, horrible, horrible day and experience, but we survived it. We will always remember it, but we overcame it. We got temporarily knocked down, but we rose back up. Beside all of the disbelief and horror and pain and shock and loss and soul scorching anger, there was a pure beauty that came out of that day. I never felt more unified with my neighbors and my fellow American citizens, than in the rest of that year, and into the new year of 2002. I never felt prouder of being an American than on those surreal days after 9/11, when we healed our trauma, together. We held our heads up high, in sharp defiance of evil. I remember for days that turned into weeks and then into months, the feeling of unification was everywhere. People were kind to each other. People focused on how akin they felt to each other. People did whatever they could, in order to heal and to memorialize this awfulness, in a most graceful, dignified, sacred, all encompassing way. People from other countries spoke only of our country’s greatness, of our unmatched generosity, of our beacon of hope which we give to everyone all over the world. We put aside our differences, during that painful time, because we knew that to become whole again, for the raw vulnerability to be cleansed and to be healed, that we needed the support of the whole body of our great country.
Today, we will get set back into our grief a little bit again, but let us also remember the utterly amazing, awe-striking unified Phoenix that rose from those lowly ashes. Let that defiant Phoenix of destiny, which rose and soared above all that which was meant to destroy us, be an example and a reminder to all of us, of what we are capable of doing with our current fires and traumas and fears. We owe this to the people who gave up their lives on 9/11, and to the families who still grieve their appalling sudden losses. We owe this to future generations, to give them an example of core strength and hope and the proof that love and respect for each other, is really what conquers all. Our future generations will need a positive example to fall back on, a wisdom to thrive from, when dark days happen again in their lives, and in the history of America. We need each other. Today, as Americans, we all embrace each other in comfort and compassion. Let’s find more strength and power and energy and onus, in today’s embrace. Let’s all look outwards, together, from this embrace into a unified vision of the beautiful country that everyone who has fought for, and who has lost their lives for, believes in. We aren’t where we need to be yet as a country, but we can get there. It won’t be from fighting each other, though. We need each other.
We healed over the acute pain of 9/11. There will always be a sharp ragged scar, which will always hurt to the touch, but we survived it, and then we thrived. We know that we are a country that is capable of great, great things. We’ve proven that to ourselves, and to everybody else, again and again. We rise from the ashes, and we continue to do so, every time that we are called to do it. Let’s try now to give our collective healing from our current pains, some wings of unity, dignity, love, respect, kindness, empathy and hope, and let the rest of it all – the divisiveness, the inequalities, the failure to work together, the closed minds, the focusing on all of the negative without putting major energy towards the solutions – let’s let all of this negativity that is no longer useful to our country’s greater good, just smolder away in the ashes of what does not serve us. We are the people of a great democracy. We decide what matters. We need each other.
(I apologize for not sticking with my traditional Friday format, but honestly, not really. Thank you for understanding.)
As awful as 9/11 was, I remember feeling so close to everyone. I remember feeling love and compassion for others, strangers even, like I never had before. We were living in Pennsylvania when it happened, and our neighbor was on a business trip in NYC. He was in the World Trade Center. Thankfully, he was a survivor of the attacks. A couple of weeks after the attacks, he came to our house to tell us about the experience. I remember how much he emphasized how kind everyone was to each other, as they hurried down the staircases. He said that it was less of a panic and more of a unified urgency to help each other to safety. Out of one of the most hateful acts ever to be perpetrated, came out a universal Love like most of us had never experienced.
