The Lessons Learned
Sep. 11th, 2006 06:17 pmOkay, let's take a minute and indulge the morbid game of the day.
My most vivid memory of five years ago was stepping into the men's room for about 15 minutes and just shaking, because I was completely certain that there had to be a biological attack following. It just didn't make any sense otherwise: it was insanity to mount an attack of this level and then just stop -- surely this had to simply be a softener for something that would do real national damage. At a fundamental level, I didn't get the point of terrorism qua terrorism; really, I still don't get it. I think I'm happier that way.
And then I came out and went back to work. Horrible though it was, my life really hadn't changed much, the product wasn't going to code itself, and the eight of us at the company tacitly agreed that we were still sinking or swimming together, and a company-wide day off wasn't something we could afford. So life went on pretty normally, save for being a little sadder than normal over the lives lost to that insanity. Which, I think, was and remains the right lesson of the day...
My most vivid memory of five years ago was stepping into the men's room for about 15 minutes and just shaking, because I was completely certain that there had to be a biological attack following. It just didn't make any sense otherwise: it was insanity to mount an attack of this level and then just stop -- surely this had to simply be a softener for something that would do real national damage. At a fundamental level, I didn't get the point of terrorism qua terrorism; really, I still don't get it. I think I'm happier that way.
And then I came out and went back to work. Horrible though it was, my life really hadn't changed much, the product wasn't going to code itself, and the eight of us at the company tacitly agreed that we were still sinking or swimming together, and a company-wide day off wasn't something we could afford. So life went on pretty normally, save for being a little sadder than normal over the lives lost to that insanity. Which, I think, was and remains the right lesson of the day...