9/11/21

I remember 9/11 vividly, the first, fifth, tenth, and fifteen anniversaries, not so much, if at all. My 9/11 story is, thankfully, unremarkable, in the big scheme of things, but instructive nonetheless.  I was living in Burlingame, about twenty miles south of San Francisco.  Most likely, I had set my radio alarm clock (yes, I had a cell phone, but used it sparingly) to wake me up at 6:45am, to be in the office in Redwood City, ten miles south, by 8:30am.  A meeting was scheduled, and ultimately held, with investment bankers engaged to assist with the sale of the company, a travel technology concern. It was a Tuesday, a typical late summer day in the Bay Area, pleasant in the morning, warm in the afternoon, clear skies, perfect air quality (recall this was twenty years ago).  I was expecting to hear music, but instead I heard a report about two planes crashing into the Twin Towers.  My sister and her spouse lived in New York City at the time, in mid-town, Murray Hill to be precise.  I had visited many times, most recently in September 2000, after backpacking through Europe, before starting my first job as an attorney.  I do not recall if I called or tried to call, as the cell phone and/or land line service might have been compromised.  Her condo was far enough from the Twin Towers for safety to be essentially ensured, but the situation generally would have been chaotic anywhere in the city.  I showered, got dressed, drove to the office, learning that the south tower had just collapsed. It was as sinking a feeling as any.  We met with the bankers, but I should have realized then and there that we were entering a new ice age in travel and that any prospects for a timely sale were cratered as soon as the first plane hit the north tower.  

9/11 is my father’s birthday.  Naturally, it has had a different meaning for the past 20 years. It is still a mostly positive occasion, but that fateful day cannot be (and should not be) unremembered, nor can (or should) its legacy. 

Time stood still (at least for me), after the carnage was understood.  Planes then in the air were diverted to land at the nearest airports.  Flights were grounded.  Rental car agencies were flooded with calls from stranded travelers, willing to drive cross country to get home to their loved ones.  The country came together, coalesced, that day, for the last time in the last 20 years. It seemed that in March of last year, at the putative beginning of the pandemic in the United States, the same was happening, but not long after, partisanship ruled the day once again. 

I have been trying to figure out what it is about 20 years that makes today particularly meaningful and, I hope, instructive. Surely, the withdrawal from Afghanistan is part of the equation, such that it is not just the 20 years that is top of mind.  Every few minutes or so, CNN seems be airing ads for its 20^th anniversary special.  This is not helping. Social media, nascent 20 years ago, is amplifying the anniversary.  There is no shortage of seminal events, catastrophes, disasters, but this one seems different.  For me, 1986 was another one of those years, with the Challenger explosion, shown countless times at school, and the Chernobyl disaster, only a few months later.  In time, those receded into memory, except, of course, for those personally affected by them. 

At the very least, 9/11 instructs vigilance.  The first Twin Tower attack occurred in 1993.  I was in college, in California, and have no memory of that event.  The Internet was not widely available.  Perhaps I missed it on the local news. The US Embassy in Nairobi was bombed in 1998.  The USS Cole was attacked in 2000. I do recall these, vaguely, but, like most, was not connecting the dots.  In some ways, the world is even more tumultuous and chaotic now.  Of course, much more information is available (and accessible), but more effort is required to distinguish facts from opinion and to understand the true story.  There is a second, equally important learning.  Finding the right balance to deal with complex problems is always a difficult endeavor.  Sometimes, there is overreaching.  Surely, we need to question and calibrate continuously, but we also need to as a nation realign on first principles to decide what kind of future we want to have. 

Comments welcomed.