September 11: Eight years later

I took this photo from the Hilton Millennium’s upper floors.

It’s been eight years since the towers fell, eight years since a morning that few of us will ever forget, nor should we.

It’s been eight years, two wars overseas, a Great Recession, two elections, 34.1 million births and 19.9 million deaths in America since 9/11. A lot has happened in that time, good and ill. Marriages and divorces, arrivals and passings, heroes and villains, life and death in spades.

If you knew that a year from now, on September 11 at 8:46 AM, your life would suddenly end, what would you do differently now? Would you leave that job? Would you treat the people around you differently and let some go from your life? Would you spend more time with the people you love or work to leave the world as best a place as you can make it?

How would we remember you? How would you want us to remember you? What would you want us to do after you’re gone?

“We are each born with death, and grow up dying inside ourselves.” – Zen poem

Your death is certain. It’s mostly a question of when and how we will part ways, and what happens until then. I hope we all find our own ways to honor those who have left us, not only on 9/11 but in the eight years since, and that we live up to the trust left with us to live this life the best we can, while we can.

Are you living the life you want while you still can?

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