Yesterday was the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. I pretty much stayed off twitter and FB because I just didn’t know what to say. All I could come up with was this. I remember…
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| Photo By AP/Justin Lane, Pool |
I do. I watched it on TV. I live near NYC. My husband is a commuter. We had no cell phones. My first child was 7 months old. People jumped. Heroes filled my heart. The words are hard to come by. The memories are vivid. I took no massive personal loses. I know people who lost loved ones. I know people who were almost lost. They all effect me, but it is the ones who, for no logical reason, deviated from their routines that day who capture my attention. They are the ones that fascinate me the most. Why did that happen?
Like most people, I’ve been known to have regrets. When I’m caught in a personal tragedy, I’ll sit there, smack in the middle of the mess and wonder–why did that happen? What would life be like if I’d taken a different path, if I’d just made a different choice. What if I had deviated.
I think that 9/11 was the moment I began to play with the idea of choices. There were other moments, ones in the years to come that continued to fill me with question, but this one was an extremely large trigger. Were there forces at work that made one person miss their train and another get to work early? What was the defining line between a miracle and a tragedy? What was random and what was destined? I began to wonder if the picture of our lives is being painted on a canvas of massive scale and all we actually see is one small corner of it, like the story of The Blind Men and the Elephant. Maybe we think we understand, but perhaps from a single point of view, the full vision is impossible to comprehend. I began to feel that the universe was more than I could dare to dream–that is was truly beyond what I could possibly understand.
My curiosity, which I once thought was folly, has become too big to contain. I want to imagine the unimaginable. Could I find beauty in something ugly? I’ve come to believe that everything I write is now rooted in this mystery. Looking back I know that 9/11 was not the first time that this strange dichotomy made me restless. I just didn’t pay as much attention. As a school-ager, I was fascinated by the story The Gift of the Magi. I’m haunted by it. It is why Lois Lowry’s THE GIVER became my favorite book of all time. The ending left me insatiable. It is why I have written TOUCHING THE SURFACE.
On this anniversary, it’s expected that we ask…why did that happen? And rightly so. But I used to think that these words only came on the heels of a tragedy. They often do, but now I also believe they precede a mystery, a journey, a bigger picture, a chance to deviate. It isn’t just important to remember. Sometimes we must remember to ask ourselves–why did this happen? It’s then that we find something good…where we least expected it.
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Touching post. Everything is so big, I don't know what to say.
Just <3
Amen. You are so right. 🙂
Love you guys! I really do…you are two of my many blessings.