Essay on September 11th (written 9/16/01)

On September 11th, the sky fell in New York.  I know because I saw it.  Even from several miles away, on the corner of 34th Street and Park Avenue, you could hear humanity gasping.  From where I stood, as we saw the first tower fall, the air didn’t get sucked out of your lungs, but out of your soul. 

I don’t know why, but until that moment when the first tower collapsed at 10:05 am, the disaster unfolding before our eyes was comprehendible to me—believable.  A plane crashed into a very large building.  It was on fire.  People were dying by the hundreds up there.  A second plane crashed.  It must be a purposeful attack.  But the second tower would have already been evacuated.  The pentagon was under siege.  More fire.  More people dying.  But it was a fortified military building.  People might be okay.  But as the miles of steel, glass, paper and people collapsed—as they were sucked up by the ground—with it went any hope that we were witnessing anything less than the largest horror in our lifetimes.  For a split second I wondered if all of New York City might be swallowed up along with the towers, and I mentally noted that it was downhill from where I stood to the smoking void, worrying that inertia was against us.  When that first tower came down, my world had to be rearranged to accommodate an event whose magnitude simply couldn’t be comprehended outside of a movie screen or a Tom Clancy novel.  I imagine it will be many months before any of us can make sense out of what occurred in those few hours on that beautiful September Manhattan morning.

As my world was busy re-arranging itself on the streets of midtown Manhattan, I wasn’t gripped by terror or horror—as I’m sure the attackers hoped we all would be.  I was gripped by the confluence of  immense sadness and terrible anger.  Where was my family?  My friends?  Had they been watching, been there?  Were they all okay?  What about the victims trapped at that very moment?  Two miles away, people were dying who had started their day just like me.  Maybe they were staying in my hotel.  Maybe they drove by me on the way to work as I was heading to breakfast.  And what about the families of the people trapped?  Somewhere they were watching in a horror soon to be multiplied by a thousands times what I felt.  At the same time, anger brimmed up inside me, hurting my ears.  Who could have done this?  How could this ever happen in our country, the safest country in the world?  Where were they now?  Could I help catch them?  Attack them?  How could I help?  Why hadn’t I spent my life learning to be a doctor, becoming a city leader, or joining the CIA—so that I could help make this better?  Dammit, who the hell did these people think they were?  That afternoon, I put on my running shoes and sprinted through the streets for miles in anger and despair, looking for answers, finding none.

In the hours and days after the attack, as I walked the streets of midtown Manhattan, an eerie sense of calm and resolution pervaded.   In the faces on the street was numbness, and stunned silence, and a sorrow so thick you didn’t notice the smoky air.  People held gazes longer, spoke quietly into cell phones, touched strangers gently, insisted that others were first in line.   Nobody crossed against the light.  Not a single car horn sounded.  But there was no fear.  As buildings were evacuated, emergency vehicles cruised otherwise empty streets, and military air craft buzzed overhead, people resolutely paced the sidewalk waiting to resume their lives.  That resolution gave me confidence and inspiration that this attack, despite the unfathomable scale, was an insignificant speck compared to the power of the human spirit.  And somehow, there in the midst of the supposed war zone, I knew that these evil acts would backfire.  They had not scared our country into terror and paralysis.  They had not fractured our sense of calm.  Instead, they had urgently reminded us of what we hold so dear but too often take for granted.  And not just in our country, but all across the free world, millions—actually, literally BILLIONS—of people were plotting their personal response to this tragedy.

Indeed, the sweet irony of these horrific events is that while thousands of innocent lives were lost, as a result thousands more will be saved as all free nations declare war on any and all forces which violate the sanctity of human life.  Before last Tuesday, extremist acts and organizations around the world were disconnected and treated as localized problems.  And I am not just talking about suicide bombers in Gaza or terrorist attacks on Western embassies or racial cleansing in Africa.   Because of these horrific events, we must declare war on extremist beliefs and organizations of any kind which hold their cause higher than the value of a single human life.   Abortion doctors being murdered, spiked trees killing loggers, a gay man being tortured and killed because of a comment at a bar, violent protests at free trade conferences, religious persecution in almost every country in this world, human rights violations in many—we must come to understand that all of these acts are forms of the same evil, which threaten not only the American way of life, but the survival of our race—the human race.  I am confident we will come to that understanding, and it will unite us as never before. 

Finally, this is the wake up call that my generation—not just here but all around the free globe—has needed.    Most of us have never tasted war, never felt oppression, and never feared for our way of life.  With the exception of poverty, illness and accidental death, my generation has been free to worry about more luxurious details such as maximizing education, experiencing life, and improving our individual and collective standard of living.   I think that might have changed last Tuesday.

The terrorists hoped to threaten our way of life, to take away our sense of security, to restrict our freedom of travel, to make us fear public places and events, to make us hate and fight back at an invisible enemy that lurks in every shadow.  They hoped to fracture our collective spirit into individual pieces, make us look out only for ourselves, isolate our nation from the world. But I don’t believe that is what will happen.  Instead, we will emerge from the death and destruction with a renewed will to protect our way of life, embrace our social encounters, grow closer to the hearts of citizens from every freedom-loving nation, and cherish every moment of delicious freedom.

Compared to the events of this week, fears of worthless stock options, not being able to afford a dream house, not getting into the college of choice, potentially losing a job, long travel delays, and even failure itself seems trivial.  What doesn’t seem trivial all of a sudden is a home-cooked meal with family friends, a long hike in the woods, a lazy Saturday morning, watching a baseball game in the crisp fall evening, experiencing a different culture, noticing the leaves slowly turning colors on the maple tree next door, or getting a slap on the back from a colleague after a job well done.

It is in pursuit of those things that I pledge to return to my regularly-scheduled life today with renewed determination to play my part in our society so that I may savor the sweetness of life.  If these horrific events must cause us to re-arrange our view of the world around us, let that view include a renewed appreciation of  the joyful, simple, flavorful, comic and beautiful moments all around us.  It will be years before I put the memories of the past week behind me, but I hope I never lose this taste in my mouth and lump in my soul that reminds me we are a great, if still imperfect, nation striving only for lasting, global peace and freedom.   Yes, life has changed, and may we never, ever, forget it. Let us declare September 11th forever as a symbol of freedom and global peace that is far stronger than any tower or military establishment.   

And now, I’m going to do exactly what those responsible for this horror want me not to.  I will return to my job, my friends, my hobbies and my family with a renewed sense of purpose and determination not to be intimidated or defeated.  I will not cower in fear, I will not lash out in anger, I will not rush to blame.  Instead I will reach out to the people around this country and around this world—any and everybody who respects freedom, peace and the sanctity of human life—to prove we have only one race, the human race.  Life goes on.  There is much work that must be done.

Justin Kitch
Menlo Park, California
9/16/01