It’s 4AM on 9/11 and I can’t sleep. This day has felt like an out-of-body experience for each of the previous 11 years – I can “see” the murderers getting on the planes, I can “see” them taking control, I can “see” them crashing the airplanes into the Pentagon and Twin Towers, and I can “see” the passengers taking control of the plane that crashed in the Shanksville area.
Yet I really can still see the Towers falling.
I was on the corner of 42nd and 6th along with thousands others when the first Tower came down.
I can still hear the silence and the sobs.
This was all before social media, before bandwidth would have allowed the flow of petabytes of streaming video, before Twitter posts and Facebook Likes. The Internet had slowed to a crawl, all circuits were busy but the only technology that enabled communication were Blackberrys. Prehistoric times.
But in the weeks following 9/11, this was also when people actually talked to each other; when friends came together and shared hopes and fears; when families did things as a family, spur-of-the-moment activities that didn’t involve proving “offspring genetic superiority” to other families in the neighborhood. There were more hugs than handshakes. For a time it wasn’t about “me” but about “us”…
But 12 years later, it’s the Social Media Age, with the minutiae of our lives shared in real-time – and we’re all richer for it. We text across rooms, our Snapchats disappear, we self-anoint ourselves as Rockstars, Ninjas, Gurus, and Experts, and receive a little dopamine spritz every time someone Likes, Shares, or retweets. We document our lives in “the Cloud”, walk through intersections with our heads buried in our smartphones oblivious to traffic conditions, check work emails at 3AM.
If the memory of 9/11 has fallen off your front page because your ego-driven, marketing induced digital life has become so important, then at least for this one day think of the 2,977 who never had the chance to Tweet, Like, or Share their lives with anyone. Don’t text, talk. Don’t tweet, call. Don’t Like, hug.
Never forget…
The Recruiting Inferno 
Remember, too, all the heroes who jumped in to try to save people and suffered terrible health (and mental health) consequences. And their families, too. National pride, our belief that we can protect our own, was shattered that day. Ironically, the only way to hug you at this moment is digitally: xoxoxo
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Amen
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On September 11, 2001, I was at my desk at a client site, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in Ridgefield, CT. Had timing been different I would not have been there because I had already been told that my contract would be ending. As the events of the morning unfolded, rumors that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers began to float around the building. I found the CNN coverage on the internet and saw pictures of the smoldering, gaping hole in the building so we knew that this was not just a small plane accidentally falling out of the sky. Then the news arrived, first by telephone from a relative of a co-worker watching TV at home, that the second tower had been struck by another plane. Soon, the new pictures began to be added to the CNN coverage. The company internet slowed to a crawl and we had no cell phone signal in the building. Concern mounted as everyone thought about people they knew who worked at the World Trade Center. I thought about the job interview I had in the WTC only a few weeks earlier and also remembered to say a prayer of thanks that I was in a dead-end job instead of working for a new client where actual death could be happening.
The R&D building at BI in Ridgefield has a large symposium room with state-of-the art technology. I had worked behind the scenes with techs there setting up seminars for PhD candidates who had to make a scientific presentation as part of their job interview process. I grabbed one of them in the hallway and asked how difficult it would be to show a live TV broadcast on the rear-projection screen. Within minutes the pictures and accounts from lower Manhattan were flashing larger than life on the huge screen from the built-in projection system. Word spread that this impromptu “meeting” was going on and soon the room was filled with people watching the screen in disbelief. As we watched, with the TV cameras focused on the antenna array on the top of one of the towers, the building began to crumble and one of the historic landmarks of the New York skyline disappeared into a cloud of dust. Audible gasps and sobbing were heard all around the room.
For the families of those who were in the Twin Towers that day, life changed forever as loved ones never came home from work. The survivors who escaped will be marked forever by the events that are etched in their memory. I was safe, but faith comes close to disbelief when others’ life plans suddenly cease. Then I heard my Mom’s voice in my head repeating the message that is somehow unforgettable: Everything always works out for the best. It was then I decided that terrorists can take my life, but I WILL NOT LET THEM TAKE MY FAITH!
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Steve, I don’t have anything profound or deeply moving to contribute.
I just wanted to say that was absolutely beautiful, sir.
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I wrote something similar Steve. #peace and God Bless! http://www.derdiver.com/welcome.htm&blogarticle=2977
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