Ephemeral
e·phem·er·al, adjective, lasting for a very short time.
It’s been quite a while since I felt compelled to write, and I’ve wrestled with this because it’s something I enjoyed doing, but over the past two or three years that joy has faded. The topics I enjoyed writing about, at the time, were fairly innocuous. I shared stories about my experiences working with and leading fantastic teams of young Americans as we, together, tackled and accomplished big things — hard things — under incredibly difficult circumstances.
Some of the pieces I wrote got only a few dozen reads, others were reprinted in national publications, while yet others are still used today in various leader development curricula. The clicks and the credit were never the point though. I’ve often joked with my wife and friends that writing was more of a therapeutic effort. I was able to dig deeper and really refine my own thoughts and opinions through the exercise of writing. But that stopped being the case toward the end of 2020 and particularly once we turned the calendar into January 2021. Until then much of what I wrote was grounded in a belief that, at the end of the day, after all the gnashing of teeth, spirited disagreements, after tragedies and successes, and after trying everything else, we, Americans, would always arrive at a consensus rooted in a shared desire for truth, justice, and grace for one another. And, in my judgement, I had good reason to believe that was possible.
Every year on the anniversary of 9/11 we see countless social media posts, stickers, and slogans that say Never Forget. And few things are truer — we must never forget. To do so would be disrespectful to the lives lost, and it would be dangerously negligent as we continue to chart a course forward into the turbulent 21st century. But, if Never Forgetting stops with the 11th, we’re missing an important opportunity to recall when our country was arguably its strongest. On Wednesday September 12th, our nation awoke bloodied and grievously wounded, but we looked at one another, set aside our many differences, and helped one another back to our feet. Americans of all backgrounds, races, ethnicities, faith traditions, and stations on the economic ladder stood together to help their neighbors. We were attacked in a most cowardly fashion, and yet the next morning we got up. No matter what happened in the ensuing twenty years of armed conflict, we’d already won when on Wednesday morning we got ourselves up off the ground and took our first collective steps back toward the ambitions and ideas we believed our country was founded upon. But, sadly, shamefully, somewhere along the way we stopped.
Today I sit and reflect on the events of the next day because I think they represent an unacknowledged theme for much of what I’ve written in the past. Wednesday, in my mind, represents what and who we as 330 million individuals could be, and what we could accomplish if we chose to conduct ourselves with even a fraction of the grace, love, compassion, and dogged determination that shined so bright on the sobering morning after. But we haven’t. Instead, we’ve allowed greed, pride, selfish ambition, willful ignorance, and vilification of others to supplant the virtues that brought us back to our feet. On that Wednesday morning we stood as clear eyed adults faced with a generational challenge. Today, in many ways, we dither like petulant children arguing over who gets the biggest piece of candy, all the while missing opportunities to address the real threats to our future and prosperity.
Perhaps it was naïve to hold out hope, particularly for as long as I did, that we could repeat the tragically ephemeral sense of community that existed that morning and the many that followed, but I did. And I wish I still could.
On Wednesday September 12th, 2001 our nation stood together. We put aside the animus and dissent, we looked beyond superficial differences, and we chose to pick each other up. We chose to do that.
I have friends and acquaintances who will read this and feel as if it’s speaking directly to them; they’ll feel attacked. Others will read it and cheer in a way that ignores the real challenges and grievances of the first group. They’ll both have missed the point, because no matter the outcome the first Tuesday in November, my concerns will remain. National political dysfunction and inept leadership are simply a reflection of the populace and its culture. If we chose to demand dignity, we’d get it; if we chose to demand truth, we’d get it; and, if we chose to demand strength balanced with compassion, we’d get that too.
The choices we’ve made during the last several years indicate that perhaps, despite all the bumper stickers, buttons, and hashtags, we have indeed forgotten, the 11th and the 12th.
Jack
