Plain Talk For Painful Times

September 11, 2001 became our new “Day of Infamy.”

The calls started at 6:00 a.m. PST. Mother’s voice shrilled into my not-quite awake brain. “Turn on ABC.” She hung up.

The devastation and the horror began with a flick of power to the television. Hatred came to life before my eyes. With it came fear, a moment of panic, and then calls to everyone I loved and cared about. Like so many of you, I alternated between listening and watching “the news” to half-hearted attempts at work.

On the day after this evil, I am compelled to write. Everyone reading this has also experienced both the planned cruelty of humanity as well as its generosity. People stood in line waiting to donate blood. Firefighters and police officers gave their lives. Messages of support swirled across e-mail channels. And the “safety” we thought was ours has disappeared in the dense clouds of smoke that carried the World Trade Tower, the Pentagon, and four planes into destruction. All the technology in the world would not have prevented this attack. The human technology of hatred overrode all systems.

The question for me is deeper then “who did this?” Instead, the question is “how can we use this evil to become wiser and more humanly connected?” How the nation responds in the aftermath of this horror will tell the world just who we really are. I pray that our wise responses will be words of compassion and reason in the midst of insanity. While the cold inhumanity of terrorism is horrific, it cannot lead us into generalizations about a race, religion, or nation. The actions of a few do not denote the mindset of all.

If this day of infamy is to be truly life changing, we must tell ourselves the truth. The truth is that evil can be done to others when one feels no connection with the victim. The hate crimes that have been perpetrated in our country are the same evil. The difference is scale and the fact that we have witnessed the horrific killings first hand from a televisions lens.

To truly honor the memory of the men, women, and children who were murdered in yesterday’s attack, may I suggest that we explore our own connections with others. Whose voices do we turn off because of prejudice? Are we willing to explore another point of view? What words of vindictiveness and cruelty do we stand by and hear without comment?

Can we make our workplaces open for the give and take of ideas, opinions and the honoring of differences? With whom do we need to reconcile so that our space on this earth is not splattered with bitterness?

Let us not hide behind the fear of vulnerability for such fear leads to either bluster and posturing or hunker-down and retreating. Rather, let us be courageous and use this event as a catalyst to connect the human web in our work, our community, our nation and our world.

Consider this plain talk for painful times.

© 2001 by Eileen McDargh. All rights reserved. Reprints must include byline, contact information and copyright.