A flashback to 9/11

Well, it took me being sick on a Sunday to finally go through my many different folders and synchronize my writing pieces, but I am happy to finally have that done. I had folders on two separate personal laptops, two separate work laptops a blackberry and a PDA. Now they are finally all joined and hopefully, I will never have to go through this exercise again.

Funny thing though, I came across something I began writing back in December of 2001. That is a very inauspicious time indeed, because that was around the time when New York was in turmoil; I was in turmoil. I worked in the World Financial Center which was right next to the World Trade Centers. After the collapse, less than a week later, American Express had my group back up and running in Jersey City, NJ. We were finance, and whatever is a business suppose to do without its finance teams back in working order?

I'll quit here because this could get lengthy, but the point I want to bring you to is my state of mind at the time. I wasn't feeling very positive about life and living. I wasn't suicidal or anything. But I had begun to put less of a value on human life and existence when it could all be taken away so easily. To this day, 5 and a half years later, I still believe that life is worthless unless you impact something or someone.

Well, I just wanted to share with you this piece. Like I said, it began in December 2001, but probably wasn't finished until sometime in 2002. I hope that perhaps, in this piece, you can capture the mind of a 25 year old kid, scared shitless about life's relevance amidst the backdrop of 9/11, which he saw every day for 3 months up until this point in time:

As I step off the Hudson Bergen Light rail, and the skyline comes into view, something is noticeably missing.

Yes, there were two large buildings that once stood there, but they were not as large as the buildings inside of those buildings. Each individual lost, each came down like powerful edifices permanently banishing all that is physically recognizable and leaving behind remnants of a torn mind.

Leaving only euphemisms behind. A world unkind. Substance abuse. But not drugs or alcohol. We’ve abused the substance that is to live. The substance that wakes us up in the morning to hunt for our direction, for the completion of our souls, for the understanding of our dilemmas, which is to exist.

To fathom beliefs beyond the natural realm of social thought and construct. . .and construct. . .and construct buildings 100 stories tall and fill them full of buildings each individualistic in nature and yet symbolically similar to each other.

Yes, there were two large buildings that once stood there, but they are not as large as the buildings inside the buildings. But only to live is to reject the soul. . .to manifest existence, is recognizing that not all parts of ourselves is earthly bound. . .or bound to the earth, as it were. Creatures of habit in constant battle with creatures of change. How profound the notion that neither shall ever win.

There has to be a change. There must be a change. Change must change. We must adapt to the world, not the other way around. To try and force the world to adapt to us is breaking down the elements of who we are into only an earthly body, distant of our metaphysical bodies, our antibodies, ourselves.

Overall, we are so much more than those buildings that came down that day, but as human beings, we pale in comparison to glass, metal and processed plastic. If we do not learn to accept our lives as more than what our eyes can see, many more buildings will fall and before long, we truly will cease to exist.

Every time I cross a picture of the New York skyline. . .the old New York skyline, I can't help but stop and stare in awe at how tall those buildings used to be.

They are no longer there; a piece of me is no longer there; a piece of my security is no longer there.

I hope.