If I had a stick, I might have used it

Some thoughts for September 11th

My son sent me this photo from his apartment yesterday. It triggered memories of where I was on 9/11 and what I was doing as if it was yesterday. I recall a beautiful, cool, crisp and sunny day those nearly two and a half decades ago. It was an early fall day we would normally savor.

I recall dismissing our staff and heading home. Throughout the day, my wife and I watching the unthinkable unfold. CNN’s coverage of people on the upper floors of the World Trade Center jumping from blown out windows to their deaths in order to escape the fames before the towers collapsed. The news cameras, still some distance away, following them down as far down as they could.

I can’t imagine that. Calling my wife only to leave a voice mail knowing I would never see her or any of my family again. Knowing that that evening’s activities would never come to pass. Weighing being roasted alive, crushed or jumping a 1,000 feet to my death.

It all was horrific and profoundly sad. I kept saying to myself, “to what end? What type of warped mind can justify that mass murder of innocent people in the name of anything? I asked as a prayer to understand at some level, any level why.

At the time, I had no answers. Today, I think I do.

On the heels of 9/11 I had hoped that we would use this terrible black mark as a watershed moment to collectively learn and improve. But, as you all know, it isn’t the first time a group (including governments) have used mass murder or civil unrest as a weapon and it certainly was not the last.

Do you know we have a mass-shooting event at schools here in the United States now every two weeks on average? Children doing math problems and teachers leading reading groups are now gunned down at school on average about every 14 days.

And we aren’t worried about this? In what reality is this ok? Or normal, for that matter? We accept gun lobbyists saying, yes that dead children are unfortunate but we have 2nd Amendment Rights to bear arms. How about the first right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness instead of a head wound in third grade science class. The problem is what used to be grievous is now normal. And, we can live with normal. Really? Can we?

I am going to try and bring this home, so bear with me.

Yesterday I went to pick up the bike I had been hit on back on May 30th. If you read my work, you know the story so I will skip the details.

A friend who is a pro-mechanic was doing a once over and some repairs now that I was again medically cleared to train and race again.

I had my now dialed in-again 3T Exploro Pro gravel bike on the rack affixed to the back of my Jeep Rubicon. It was another beautiful day and I had the roof off and was reflecting on the picture my son had taken the night before in New York. He had been born only a few months after the tragedy, so his knowledge, like many is secondary.

There was a gap in traffic, so I merged onto the on-ramp for the highway that circles Indianapolis when I heard a horn that did not quit and realized the lady in the small blue Lexus SUV had rapidly accelerated to close the three car gap and cut me off from merging, coming only about six inches from my topless and doorless Jeep. She accelerated so quick that she nearly ran into the back of car in front of me in order to close the gap. I actually heard her engine racing before I saw her next to me.

This was a bit unnerving because a truck’s racing engine was the last thing I heard before the hit and run nearly killed me. I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about it but this is context, ok?

I swerved back into the other lane as she was swerving her blue Lexus into me, crowding me out, seemingly unconcerned if she hit me or not. I slowed and fell in behind her allowing her the lane I had just mostly vacated. The driver behind flipped his brights and let me in. Looking in my rear view mirror and waving thanks, that driver gave a thumbs up.

We all merged onto the interstate and again the little blue Lexus cut several people off blocking them from crossing from the merge lane into the faster left lane. Her horn in full use. I could see her phone in her right hand. She had been on a video chat when she cut me off and she was continuing with her other hand on her horn.

“Wow.” I said to myself. “So much anger. Why?” Instantly I recalled asking myself the same question on 9/11 all those years ago. I quickly forgot her as she sped off ahead leaving the chaos she had created behind.

My gas gauge dinged a few miles later as I exited 465 onto Meridian Street, so I decided to pull in for gas at the station where we collect loyalty points. Pulling in, at the pump in front of me sat a small blue Lexus SUV. And there she was, standing outside of her open driver door, still using her speaker for a FaceTime call. She was listing all her grievances on topics impossible to follow all at about 80 decibels, oblivious to everyone around her.

I got out and put my card in the pump. Now just mildly amused at what I was witnessing. I was trying to follow the conversation but it was pretty much impossible.

And this is where it gets a little weird.

“Hey white guy.” Yep. That happened. She stood there glaring at me with phone in hand. I now noticed she was quite large, dressed in a moo-moo that matched the color of her SUV, flip flops and a massive amount of hair. I recall fixating on her hair. I’d kill for hair that thick.

“Why you got that damn bike on the back of your car? You didn’t see me back there? That damn bike blocking your view? That that damn thing of the back of your car and put it inside. It don’t belong there. You need to see where you damn going. You hear me?” Pause. Then speaking more to her phone than me, “Fool.”

Without looking at her, I replied, “I saw you. I had my turn signal on and there were three car lengths. More than enough space. Plus, I thought you might be nice enough to let another driver in.”

Still on FaceTime, the other person squawking and cackling with laughter like she was watching reality TV, blue Lexus replied loudly, “wasn’t your space. You hear me? What’s in front of my car is mine. You hear me? I didn’t want to let you in. I don’t like people like you.”

I wanted to ask her what she meant by that but decided discretion was going to be the better part of valor. She was perfectly willing to chance an accident, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t reverse into me before pulling out.

I simply said, “ok, fair enough. However, I have found that simply being kind to others can really improve the day. There is enough hate and anger to go around already. I really hope the rest of your day brings you good things.” I actually meant it.

With this, she went ballistic, thinking I was taunting her, which I was not. The other drivers pumping gas were now a bit unnerved with her temper tantrum.

Watching this unfold, what I saw in her was anger and a perception that everything and everyone around her was attempting to slight her. I had nothing to do with it.

Her reality had perhaps, taught her she was under constant persecution. What I saw was a profoundly unhappy person that had no idea she was rinse and repeating her misery every day. What she sent out, she got back and all that did was fuel the cycle repeating itself daily and probably getting progressively worse over time.

She went back to her call talking about some stupid white dude with a bicycle tied to the back of his car that had disrespected her. I decided enough was enough so I turned off the pump, hopped in and drove to meet a friend at the coffee shop. As I left, I noticed she had not even started to pump gas. She was that consumed in the reality she was quite literally creating for herself.

As I drove off, it dawned on me she had convinced herself of a reality that to her was very real but didn’t extend beyond that. I wondered if this is what happens with extremists. They go further down into darkness that is either self generated or from content designed to mislead and radicalize. I wondered if the person she was talking to was validating her perspective. Perhaps in ways that are similar to YouTube content. You are the victim, you don’t need to be accountable for your actions because you have been disrespected. You are right, they are wrong. You are good, they are bad.

At the coffee shop, I met up with my friend, deciding to sit outside on the concrete patio at one of the smaller tables. The patio was full. Like I said, it was a beautiful day.

After a few minutes, we eventually got to the topic I knew he wanted to talk about. He was beating around the bush, so I helped him out. "So you want to know what happened, right?”

“Yeah.” He said. I am not in the best place right now mentally. Not sleeping, getting angry too often. Lots of anxiety. I’ve even had what I have come to find out are panic attacks. I don’t know what is going on. It just seems to be getting worse little by little.

My fuse is shorter at work. I have to deal with all these idiots. I mean Steve, they are all clueless. It is like they are going through the day not thinking. Nothing at all under the surface except being lazy and not wanting to really do anything besides complain and take up space.

It is like everyone just shows up miserable, does work without thinking of who it is for, why we do it or take any pride in it, then everyone goes home at 5 on the nose.

I think talking to you about what happened…might help.”

I sat thinking for a moment. What I was thinking is that my friend was behaving a bit like blue Lexus. He was warping his reality and putting himself at the center. Becoming a victim.

So I said, “why do you want to know?”

“Because I have to believe there is something more than….this.” He looked around at everyone having business meetings and discussing how hard the class at Yoga Six was.

I smiled and began the story. I told it befoer and it is chronicalled here if you are interested. I spent about 20 minutes unpacking the now rich details of dreams leading up to my NDE and that experience itself which had come back to me after the effects of the TBI faded.

Then we talked about some things that might help him break free of where he found himself. After an hour, he had to leave, I thought he perhaps was in a better place than when he arrived. We stood, he gave me a fist bump and ventured off into his afternoon. I needed to get back to my work as well, so I began to collect my stuff from the table.

A voice behind me asked, “You don’t really believe all that bullshit do you?” Surprised, I turned and faced a guy in his late 40’s or early 50’s, in a golf shirt and expensive loafers and a pair of Maui Jim’s on top of his thinning hair. Even though the patio was packed, he was sitting at a four top table by himself, sitting in front of an open HP laptop, his backpack next to him with a large medical company’s brand emblazoned on it.

“What bullshit"?, I asked.

“C’mon man. The new age back-from-the-dead story. Green fields, mountains, angels, harps and all that shit. Great story by the way. I enjoyed it. You have a great imagination.” (I actually never mentioned anything about angels or harps).

“You don’t buy it?” I replied, setting my stuff back down but still standing.

“No way man. This is it.'“ He spread his arms wide, almost as if stretching his back. “There is nothing else. Your friend had it right. The world is a shitty place. You want something, you need to take it. No one is going to give you anything. And most people are, in fact idiots. He just needs to learn to deal with it. Toughen up maybe or take better advantage of the opportunities the idiots all miss.”

I stood there looking at him or more accurately through him for a long time. Long enough to make him a little bit uncomfortable.

I asked him if he had ever seen either the Great Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge. This question threw him off.

With a surprised look, he said, “sure, lots of times.”

He was trying to calculate where the question he had NOT expected would go. It was apparent he was coming up empty.

I replied, “no. In person. Up close.”

He hesitated, still not knowing where this was going and not really seeming to like that. “No.” He said. “I have not.”

I asked him this question because until you experience something yourself, fully, you do not know. You might think you do, but you don’t. Once you experience things in life, like either the Pyramids or Stonehenge, the energetic power they emanate, the radiation of the sheer time scale they exude is palpable. You may see pictures but you do not understand. And, you have to want to understand. You can’t just see these historical wonders, you have to experience them. Feel them. When you learn to do this, nature or history is never the same.

What I left him with was, without experiencing that, then yes, for some and perhaps him, that is all there was.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the discussion. I am sure that at some point in the day, or in the week, if either blue Lexus or Maui Jim had a stick, they would have either used it or thought seriously about using it given their state of being.

Perhaps they’d have used it on me. How I chose to interact with them both was not in the script they were working from and not the response they were attuned to.

But, that is where we are collectively. Which is why flying planes into buildings is a tactic that makes perfect sense to some. Where road rage and verbal insults seem perfectly acceptable and even justified. Where self-centeredness and the ‘end justifies the means’ is the default setting.

Where news reports of serial murders, terrorists, dirty politicians, and white collar criminals are no more than background noise anymore.

Each of us is not the center of the universe any more than we are universally right, or righteous in our right-ness.

We have not made any real progress since 9/11 it seems but that doesn’t mean we can’t. Perhaps the change in the world that we so desperately need can start with just one person seeing the world and acting different and then spreading that. Simply doing better by being better.

Being a mustard seed if you will.

And just perhaps that person who starts the change we all need is you. After all, what have you got to lose in trying?