story734.xml
Title
story734.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-06-06
911DA Story: Story
Dear 911 Website Sponsors,
?
I am a legal secretary (Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison), working and living in Manhattan.? Our office is in midtown, and the attacks and subsequent collapse?of the twin towers were clearly visible from our office windows.? I heard about your website on a morning show yesterday and that you were requesting contributions of 9/11 memorials for posterity.? I composed the following piece two days after the attacks and read it at our company's memorial service.?
?
Thoughts of a Commoner on the World Trade Center Tragedy
?
??? Finally, the newscasters are beginning to repeat themselves a little, seeming to grasp around for breaking news to report, and are even retracting dire statements made yesterday concerning the collapse of yet another building.? Sadly, what will not be repetitious for quite a long time is the mounting number of bodies and the names of those missing.
?
??? I know that the achievement of justice for those responsible for this action will not be mercifully quick.? As I listen to what is being done, I feel myself shaking my head in amazed disbelief at how little it seems, and at the same time wondering what else can be done against this particular evil.? For the first time I find myself being swayed towards the camp of those who wish the most expedient and most demolishing of retributions.??And then I hear on the news of just one man attempting to run down just one Palestinian woman for "destroying our country", and I know that my own generalized wishes for violence spring from this same poisonous fountain.
?
??? My quiet self tells me what I must do, and that is to continue to live my life with, maybe,?one small alteration: the newly-underscored knowledge that I cannot control what happens to me.? I do not know what the deepest, most impenetrable sorrows are.? I have only received the merest taste of them over the past few days, but I have never experienced utter helplessness in the face of any of the various forms of rape that can threaten to destroy a person's insides.? I can certainly pray that I never will, but I can no longer smugly take for granted that I won't.? Nor can I even reasonably expect that I will not.? My consciousness must now admit a new set of possibilities that very well can alter or remove my life at its deepest levels.? My job is to accept this knowledge with good grace, and in praying for anything for myself, to pray for the grace to continue in this acceptance as the evil in our world apparently threatens to overtake the good.
?
??? The most surprising effect of this newly-found awareness is that I feel more sharply in communion with my fellow human beings in all the world, those who wish what I wish, to live peacefully, free to love life and our beautiful earth, making whatever contributions as he or she is capable of.? Therefore, if one asks the question, 'Where, then, is God?'? The answer is, He is in our willingness to go on living and loving.
?
John A. Beasley
New York, New York
?
I am a legal secretary (Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison), working and living in Manhattan.? Our office is in midtown, and the attacks and subsequent collapse?of the twin towers were clearly visible from our office windows.? I heard about your website on a morning show yesterday and that you were requesting contributions of 9/11 memorials for posterity.? I composed the following piece two days after the attacks and read it at our company's memorial service.?
?
Thoughts of a Commoner on the World Trade Center Tragedy
?
??? Finally, the newscasters are beginning to repeat themselves a little, seeming to grasp around for breaking news to report, and are even retracting dire statements made yesterday concerning the collapse of yet another building.? Sadly, what will not be repetitious for quite a long time is the mounting number of bodies and the names of those missing.
?
??? I know that the achievement of justice for those responsible for this action will not be mercifully quick.? As I listen to what is being done, I feel myself shaking my head in amazed disbelief at how little it seems, and at the same time wondering what else can be done against this particular evil.? For the first time I find myself being swayed towards the camp of those who wish the most expedient and most demolishing of retributions.??And then I hear on the news of just one man attempting to run down just one Palestinian woman for "destroying our country", and I know that my own generalized wishes for violence spring from this same poisonous fountain.
?
??? My quiet self tells me what I must do, and that is to continue to live my life with, maybe,?one small alteration: the newly-underscored knowledge that I cannot control what happens to me.? I do not know what the deepest, most impenetrable sorrows are.? I have only received the merest taste of them over the past few days, but I have never experienced utter helplessness in the face of any of the various forms of rape that can threaten to destroy a person's insides.? I can certainly pray that I never will, but I can no longer smugly take for granted that I won't.? Nor can I even reasonably expect that I will not.? My consciousness must now admit a new set of possibilities that very well can alter or remove my life at its deepest levels.? My job is to accept this knowledge with good grace, and in praying for anything for myself, to pray for the grace to continue in this acceptance as the evil in our world apparently threatens to overtake the good.
?
??? The most surprising effect of this newly-found awareness is that I feel more sharply in communion with my fellow human beings in all the world, those who wish what I wish, to live peacefully, free to love life and our beautiful earth, making whatever contributions as he or she is capable of.? Therefore, if one asks the question, 'Where, then, is God?'? The answer is, He is in our willingness to go on living and loving.
?
John A. Beasley
New York, New York
Collection
Citation
“story734.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 12, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/18002.