The musings of a Hamptons-based shutterbug in her pursuit of life's joys - photography, food, and travel.
September 11, 2001 was a beautiful post-Labor day with clear blue skies, a feeling of normality and security, and the wonderful joy that a fast-approaching Autumn brings.
September 11, 2019 is a beautiful post-Labor day, with serious questions about normality, strong feelings of insecurity and only a cautious optimism about the coming season and those beyond.
As most who have ever read this blog know, I was downtown on 9/11. We'd just two months earlier moved downtown to an apartment, in a converted insurance company building, roughly 3-4 blocks east of the trade center, and I worked at One Wall Street. Thankfully we did not end up directly in harms way but the doubt, devastation, destruction and death that we experienced or saw that day are eternally seared into memories.
I don't know why but seeing images on TV today from that day as part of memorials about those events are disturbing me far more than in the past 16 years (the first two were tough). They are bringing back far too clearly the images I saw firsthand and feelings of what I experienced. With so many years having passed since then, I can't help but wonder why - especially as it's very disconcerting. My "physco-babble" conclusion is that the globe and too many of its residents, including me, are in such turmoil, with doubt, anger or fear for political, religious, economic, and ecological reasons far too numerous to mention here. The uncertainty is disturbing.
When I was in college, I was an Economics major who took a government course in my senior year. I have never forgotten it. We were asked to write one term-paper during the entire term, given the various governmental and economic structures and systems we had studied. I had only one subject I wanted to attempt to address - a global government and economic system. It simply made the most sense to my eager, untempered mind that one economic system could fairly exchange goods and services with a standard of behavior, and that one governmental system could ensure fair allocation of resources and distribution of goods and services. HOW NAIVE! My professor showed me a three volume set of books that rivaled a stack of 4-5 New York City phone books together in size. This true scholar had written those volumes on the same subject and my professor suspected I couldn't address a fraction of the task I'd hoped to set out before me in the time I had.
I've revisited my thoughts about that term paper many times over the years and things I obviously knew little to nothing about at the time were human nature, power, and desperation. I understand so much more now about the expression "survival of the fittest" and how it's played out in nature time and time again - including our "human" arena.
How do we agreeably organize governments that will and can work together to think about the future of this globe and all of its people - ecologically, and economically, with a cooperative political overlay that works without ego (too large and too small), and with some sincere interest about our collective future.
9/11 taught me how fragile all of our man-made structures are ... not just its monumental structures but its alliances, allegiances, governments, and beliefs. We can destroy ourselves and the planet we live on with greed and self interest. Or, we could stop listening only to ourselves and start listening ... and hearing others with an open mind ... and hopefully, learn new ways to help us all.
Here endeth the .........
