Remembering September 11 while not being consumed
The southern reflecting pool at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in lower Manhattan. As time goes by, the challenge is to not forget. Credit: Ed Quinn
When the planes hit, I was in Chicago on assignment for Newsday. I watched the towers crumble on a hotel television. The ensuing hours and days passed by in a ghastly haze.
After making sure everyone at home was OK, I finished up my work as best I could. Then, with the nation's airspace shut down, I drove my rental car across the Midwest, joined by thousands of others driving rental cars back to their homes. My only company was the car radio with its angst-ridden soundtrack of fear, confusion and conspiracy theories. I remember the highway signs warning drivers to stay away from New York, the awful sight of that smoke while crossing the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, the hellscape of rubble we later witnessed in person, and the poignant flyers all over lower Manhattan desperately seeking information about loved ones who were missing.
Most of us who lived through that day have our memories. We tuck them away, however deeply. And every so often they emerge, pushing their way forward or being summoned, as they no doubt will be later this week when we observe the 25th anniversary of 9/11, if not before.
These annual commemorations are a reminder that there is always a balance that must be struck between remembering an event and not being consumed by it. That's true for each of us as individuals and for the nation writ large. At first, we must take care not to be paralyzed by the enormity of the tragedy. As time goes by, the challenge is to not forget.
I worry a lot about that, and not simply because those who lack a personal attachment to an awful event often end up looking at it as just another paragraph in a history book. I'm worried because our national track record of responding to tragedy is not comforting.
We are beset daily by calamity. It unfolds in real time on TV and spools out across our social media. It's wildfires and mudslides and hurricanes and earthquakes. It's tornadoes and hailstorms and raging torrents of water. It's brutal heat and pounding rain and savage war and endless gunfire. Lives are lost, communities are destroyed, famine is unleashed, disease is spread. It happens in California and Nepal, in Columbia and Canada, in Europe and the Middle East, in Ukraine and Sudan, and in towns and cities across America.
And it's Sept. 11, 2001, in New York and Shanksville and Washington.
Over and over, we see the devastation play out on screens large and small and we gawk. At times we reel. Sometimes we make a financial contribution to help those affected. Inevitably, though, all of these events, no matter how upsetting at the time, seem to leave but a short imprint on our consciousness. Is this part of our human condition? Do we feel like we need to forget in order to move on?
The need to remember is not mere lip service. It's not just another empty call to action from pompous pundits. This is important work.
Remembering is healthy, and necessary. Remembering encourages empathy, a muscle most of us need to exercise more often. Remembering fosters understanding, which makes us better people.
Remembering helps us learn lessons, which can lead us to insist that we all take steps as individuals, organizations and governments to do what we can to minimize the possibility that whatever befell our fellow humans happens again. Remembering reinforces how much we have in common with others and reminds us of the insignificance of some of the divisions in our lives.
Amid the daily tally of havoc, 9/11 might seem like old news. But it's not. The lessons of tragedy are always fresh and will continue to speak to us if we listen.
Columnist Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
