FIFTEEN YEARS LATER, I, too, have learned how to get back to work, making peace with the haunting memories churned up by each anniversary. Today I can more readily perceive the helpers through the horrors. And the helpers. . . The helpers are what still reverberates a decade and a half later. They have reconstructed my faith in the human soul.
When I returned home to Brooklyn from Ground Zero on September 14, 2001, the earth seemed to have shifted on its axis. My life felt irrevocably altered, but I found it difficult to understand or express exactly what had changed.
The boat on which I served as assistant engineer, retired fireboat John J. Harvey, was lauded as a “hero of the harbor,” and so, by extension, was the boat’s crew. But the classic September 11 hero narrative never sat well with me. It seemed rooted in some arbitrary separation between those who help and those who don’t. It seemed to hinge on some diminishment of our human potential.
Many people who showed up to work at Ground Zero—firefighters, ironworkers, engineers, journalists, chiropractors, medics, people from trades of all kinds—did so out of a sense of duty and professional honor. Yet, even those with no obviously applicable expertise possessed skills that could be useful, so they used them. These acts have always struck me as less about heroism and more about pragmatism, resourcefulness, and simple human decency. If you have the wherewithal, you step up.
In her book A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit crystallizes perfectly the “resilient, resourceful, generous, empathic, and brave” nature of humans confronting disasters:
“When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up—not all, but the great preponderance—to become their brothers’ keepers. And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amid death, chaos, fear, and loss. Were we to know and believe this, our sense of what is possible at any time might change. . . . Horrible in itself, disaster is sometimes a door back into paradise, the paradise at least in which we are who we hope to be, do the work we desire, and are each our sister’s and brother’s keeper.”
Stepping up, with purpose, even in the absence of a plan, allows us to foster the connectedness that is the very manifestation of humanity.