Some columnists are in the habit of writing an annual year-end piece that points out the flawed judgments and errant predictions they made over the previous 12 months.
This practice strikes me as being as self-important as it is self-effacing, which is why I haven't written such columns in Decembers past. But as this year winds down, I feel compelled to revisit the single most misguided thought I committed to print in 2001.
This was a thought, oddly, with which I was rather pleased at a time, if one could have been pleased with any thought that occurred on Sept. 11.
It came as I was sitting at my desk, numb with shock, mesmerized by the television images, forcing myself to contemplate the scope of the day's events, and trying to figure out what to write about the public event of a lifetime.
One of the ideas that struck me was this: Disaster stories have a rhythm all their own. After a time, the initial accounts of horror and death give way to tales of a community coming together, of displays of charity, compassion and heroism. People latch on to the good that comes out of tragedy and attach to it special importance. Doing so helps pull them through. It is one of the better aspects of human nature, and we are grateful for it.
But what had happened that day in September was far beyond anything we'd seen before. This wasn't just an immense disaster; it was a terrorist attack that had killed thousands of civilians on American soil. The familiar rules of coping, I thought, would not apply; the despair was too deep.
I tried to capture my feeling of emptiness with these words: "The breadth and magnitude of our loss in terms of lives, property and our sense of ourselves as a nation are so immense that the individual stories of heroism and survival beginning to emerge seem of little relevance and comfort."
Those stories, it turns out, have had relevance, and they have brought real comfort. So, too, has the way all of us, individually and collectively, have handled ourselves in the days since Sept. 11 despite deadly anthrax in the mail, an airline passenger with explosives in his shoes, and a slumping economy that has swelled the ranks of the unemployed.
The comfort comes not just from the admiration we feel for the firemen and police officers who gave their lives at the World Trade Center while trying to rescue people they did not know, or for the workers inside who struggled to bring their colleagues out.
It comes, too, from the saga of Flight 93 and the passengers who prevented that plane from hitting its intended target.
We respect the quiet heroism exhibited over the last 15 weeks by thousands of bereaved families, so many of whom have conducted themselves with dignity and grace. We appreciate the generosity of the volunteers and donors who have tried to ease the victims' paths.
We have been elevated as well by the behavior of any number of our leaders, including a New York mayor who embodied the nation's determination to keep going, a Congress that pulled together briefly but memorably, and a president who has pursued an altogether justifiable war with resolve, restraint and success. And by those who have fought it with him.
As 2001 comes to a close, life is returning to normal in ways that don't always provide solace. The murder rate in some of our major cities is increasing after years of heading in the other direction; Congress has reverted to the politics of partisan gridlock; and football fans have feel compelled to pelt referees with beer bottles.
Our sense of national perspective is not what it might be. The evil of Sept. 11 still far outweighs the good that has come since. The sadness, while diminished, has not gone away, nor will it. But on the whole, this nation has done a remarkable job of dealing with disaster.
That is cause for pride. I'm sure of that. And it's a thought, I suspect, that won't be subject to further review.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.