With the 25th anniversary of 9/11 this past week, I found myself confronted again with the personal stories of some of the ordinary people who died that day. Many were pressed by circumstances into acts of heroism. Their names include: Todd Beamer, Brian Sweeney, Mark Bingham, Betty Ong, and Lauren Grandcolas, among many others.
While the 9/11 attacks did have elderly victims, it seems that many of them were young people in their prime years: their twenties through their forties. That is the nature of air travel, perhaps—especially on a workday. (September 11, 2001, fell on a Tuesday.) Most of the WTC victims were at work.
All of those people’s stories, compelling as they are, were cut short twenty-five years ago.
I was not anywhere near the events of 9/11 on the morning of September 11th, 2001. I was working at an office building in Erlanger, Kentucky, hundreds of miles from all of the horror that was taking place.
By that time, the internet was commonplace and ubiquitous (though social media did not yet exist). My colleagues and I became aware of what was going on in more or less real time, as it was being reported on the various news sites.
But I went home that day. Many people did not.
All those lives were cut short on September 11, 2001. I, meanwhile, have had 25 years since then—25 years of joy, sadness, disappointment, and triumph. There have been good days and bad days since then, and—I dare say—some good years along with some not-so-good ones.
But those 25 years were mine. That’s a lot of memories. On 9/11/01, I was 33 years old. I’m now 58.
Twenty-five years is an entire generation of time, a generation of time that was given to me, but not to everyone. Even as I mourn the deaths of inspiring, ordinary people whom I never knew, and (in all likelihood) never would have known, I’m compelled to reflect on my own mundane life.
I should be more grateful. I should be kinder and more considerate toward the people around me. I should make better use of the time I have been given, time that was taken from so many others.
-ET