In Memoriam

A multitude of thoughts and feelings have held my attention this week and today, the eve of the 20th anniversary of the 9.11.01 attacks on the twin towers, the Pentagon, and a doomed flight thwarted on its path to DC, thanks most likely to the heroic efforts of that plane's passengers.

Others will say it more eloquently and movingly but I'll share only one thread that's emerged for me: Meaning. How we remember, characterize, commemorate, attach and ascribe meaning -- then and now with the benefit of hindsight. That's way too complex and complicated an endeavor for this post, and then it would only be my opinion...assigning my meaning.

That's what we do though. In our many ways, we each attempt to find or make meaning in the wake of trauma and tragedy. To be unable to find or create meaning would imply randomness...and if I'm any judge, we humans don't generally like that. (Not to say that 9.11 was random. Hardly.) Instead, we've been living in and playing out a collectively agreed-upon story since that day. There are innumerable backstories as well. Meaning aids recovery. Stories aid healing.

Again, it's not for me to unravel, detangle, let alone tell anyone else what to think -- then or now. But "meaning" is the lens I've been looking through these many years later and, interestingly, I find that my initial reactions twenty years ago tomorrow are indelible, and as relevant and meaningful to me today as then. Maybe more with the passage and perspective of time.