It was an ordinary enough day – except, perhaps, for the extraordinarily crystalline blue sky. People opened their email. They rode trains. They prepped vegetables for the day’s menu. They bragged about their successes in the football pool. They sipped their coffee and dreamed about their upcoming vacation.
Then their world collapsed. Other people, willing to kill innocents to promote their political agenda, struck hard, struck swiftly, struck dramatically. The result was devastating. As the event unfolded, heroes arose. In stark contrast to the perpetrators of the deed, these people risked or gave their lives helping others. Saints arose that day, too. All around the world, people and governments reached out to try to heal the suffering.
In the days that followed, the brashest city in the brashest country in the world was the recipient of the tender solicitude offered from every corner of the globe.
In remarkably short order, most of us went on with our lives. We grappled with our fears. We took planes, rode elevators, attended Broadway shows.
Our nation struck back hard and mightily and righteously against those who attacked us — those who attacked US. What we did not do as a nation is reflect on the meaning of these events. It was anathema, which was understandable in the immediate aftermath, to examine how our role in the world contributed to those terrible events. How our role contributed to – not caused – the events of September 11. Unfortunately, that conversation is still being censored.
A few short months later, some of the most cynical people on earth used our grief and our fear and our rage to rationalize their intention to attack a country that had nothing to do with the gaping hole in the Pentagon, the crumbled towers or the charred field in Pennsylvania. Another discussion that has been censored is the bigotry involved in this action. How easily our country transferred its hostility from one group of Arabs and Muslims to another. How easily we confused bravado with patriotism.
Almost exactly four years later America is reeling again as Hurricane Katrina killed untold numbers and swept apart families, communities, and livelihoods. Once again there were heroes, many unsung, who struggled desperately to help people in need. Once again the world embraced America, despite our carelessly squandering its earlier good will. Once again there are conversations that are being censored – conversations about race, conversations about class, conversations about competence.
Twice in a few short years, America sustained serious blows to it blissful insouciance and unquestioning self-assurance. It is time to take pride in our strengths, but it is also time to humbly assess our weaknesses and to use this tragedy as an opportunity to advance as a society.
As we hold in our hearts those who have lost so much in these two devastating tragedies, let us reach inward to the best of ourselves and outward toward cooperation with others. Let us each fearlessly, but respectfully, have the conversations we can no longer avoid. Let us each honor those victims of Osama and Katrina by making a commitment to do what we can with our own time, talent and resources to make our country and the world better places. Day by day, in acts large and small we have the power to make a difference. Our hearts will go on – let them do so with grace, compassion, grit, humor and honor.