Anniversaries

Today marks twelve years since the debacle at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.. I watched those horrible events while they occurred/developed on television. At the time, I lived a stone's throw away from Logan Airport, from which one of the jets had departed. Several days earlier, I had come back from British Columbia through Logan. I easily imagined the terror aboard the hijacked jet before it crashed into a tower. 

The announcement of a television special about the construction of the mega-tower on the site of the Manhattan destruction. This jarred me into thinking about the significance of anniversaries in my life. Those twelve years had flashed past in my brain's comprehension that a dozen years had passed.  

Many people immerse themselves in sentimental nostalgia at anniversaries. Parades, graveside ceremonies, wreaths on monuments. This has never appealed to me. I tend to see anniversaries as personal days of accounting. What have I accomplished in twelve years? How has my understanding of the world changed since I experienced the events of September 11, 2001? What am I doing now which has improved or profited from my changes in the last twelve years? 

Ruminating on an adulterated view of the past is useless and self-destructive. It is the stuff of would have, should have, could have. Remorse and regret over the unchangeable is a waste of time. Implementing a stark accounting of the gains or losses of the past to promote healthy change is an intelligent use of past mistakes, tragedies and victories. The quality road forward is all we really have to hope for, despite its predictable and inevitable end. Lighting candles, rather than representing loss, should be used to illuminate the way forward.