Do you remember 9/11?
I do. I was at college at the time. In the aftermath there was this sheer horror of the event reinforced by the newly born 24 hour news cycle.
I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t at the time appreciate the significance of the loss of life – its not that I hadn’t lost close ones – I had.
I just didn’t have the life experience that I have now and allows me to stand in your shoes and feel your pain.
It is tragic beyond imagination that so many families lost their loved ones – husbands, wives, fathers etc and that changed the face of my beloved New York.
I remember visiting the site of the Twin Towers post the event and the heaviness of the silence at that site was deafening.
The memory still chills me to the bone.
Many of us want to seek meaning in such tragedies.
I find that its easier to accept that a terrible thing happened on that day and that humans, irrespective of whether they are billionaires or paupers, are capable of heinous acts.
Being at the receiving end of another’s wanton cruelty must logically define a person.
However, our very nature as humans and the fact that we have free will allows us to forgive.
I hope and pray for the victims of 9/11 and that they have the capacity in their hearts to always forgive.
The world needs more healing than wounds.