Remembering Last September
Letter from Mexico | September, 2002
A year out: did we change? If so, how did we change? If not, why not? The questions posed by the one-year remembrance of our great national trauma may be easier to ask than to answer.
On the anniversary of last September's events in New York and Washington, DC, you may be remembering where you were and what you were doing when you first heard the news.
Michael and I were here in San Miguel de Allende. When the Internet reported that one of the towers had been hit, we turned on the TV and stared speechlessly, endlessly, at CNN. Beverly and Deidrea were in Dallas, where they had arrived the night before to promote our retreats and see clients. Beverly told me later that she felt real fear when she learned that the border between Mexico and the US had been closed.
As you recall those fateful days, you may also be wondering, from the perspective of a full year, what, if anything, has changed. Pick up any newspaper or magazine during this time and you will find an outpouring of opinion from the pundits. Some are claiming that we as a culture experienced a fundamental and enduring change last September 11. Others are debunking that idea and saying that as a culture we have not changed at all -- we are still superficial, materialistic, greedy, and caught up in the latest techno-fad or celebrity gossip.
For sheer flag-waving and swagger, there is the indefatigable Andrew Sullivan writing in a TIME Magazine Essay that, yes, certainly our culture has changed. It has changed in the direction of self-righteousness, apparently, and "the appropriate response is rage." He goes on to compare the September 11 perpetrators to "the last two totalitarian powers Americans were called on to defeat -- Nazi Germany and Communist Russia." Sullivan is only the most vocal of a group of journalists who believe the culture has transformed itself, but mainly in terms of patriotism and resolve: we went, in one sobering moment, from Mr. Nice Guy to a very blustery, militaristic John Wayne or Charleton Heston. And to them, that is a good thing.
For this side of the spectrum of observers, "the illusion of isolationism has been ripped apart," in Sullivan's words, and we are more aware of being part of a community of nations and cultures. Trouble is, we seem to be more isolationist in our attitudes than ever before. Our political reach and our commercial ambitions may be global, but ordinary people in our culture have, if anything, pulled back from the world "out there." The plummeting statistics on travel, for instance, are discouraging to anyone who believes that exploring other cultures can help to bring about peace and understanding. Only around 10% of Americans hold a passport.
Then there are the commentators who are telling us that we haven't changed one bit. Charles Krauthammer, calling this Year One in The Weekly Standard, says that after the events "we returned to normality." He doubts that one happening on one day, no matter how traumatic, can change things forever -- and as an example he gives Pearl Harbor: the war may have changed everything, but "one day of infamy" did not. But September 11 did reveal what was already present in the American character. And was that that? "Above all," according to Mr. Krauthammer, "resilience." Well, yes.
Still others have taken a wider view of the issue: "The patriotic affirmation did not therefore produce anything very new," The Economist states in an excellent piece. "It merely strengthened old mentalities and deep-seated beliefs. In that sense, the impact on America's view of itself was modest. The effect on America's view of the world may prove, in time, more profound." So we may not have changed much since that shocking day, except in the critical matter of how we locate ourselves emotionally on the planet.
Ultimately the question "did we change?" must come down to whether you and I, in our personal lives, changed -- how, how much or how little, and in what ways. The spiritual impact of 9/11 is still being assessed, but for us, it surely is about whether we are more thoughtful and awake now than we were a year ago. Did we take the opportunity of "the national nightmare" to think and consider and review -- not just with our head, but also our heart? In the days and months afterwards, did we try to discover what is truly meaningful in this life that seems to hang on us so lightly? Did we feel more vulnerable, and did we take that vulnerability out into new emotional areas to connect with another -- did the events of last year make us more compassionate?
While the professional analysts argue over whether what unfolded a year ago changed our culture, it might be good to remember that our culture is only the collection of the individual consciousness of each of us. If you and I have not become more open, more aware, more available, and more loving since last September, then nothing has changed.
If we have allowed ourselves to become enlarged in mind and in spirit, then things have changed. If we have taken the cultural alarm and made it our own wake-up call to transform into the higher parts of ourselves, then things have changed. In fact, a year from now we may look back to see that September 11, 2001 was only the beginning of an inner search that is taking us forever into undreamed-of realms of self-discovery and self-knowledge -- in the words of T.S. Eliot,
We shall not cease from exploration,
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
All of us at the retreat center send you our affectionate regards,
Joseph Dispenza
LifePath
San Miguel de Allende
Mexico
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