Where were you on the morning of September 11th, 2001? Everyone seems to remember...
On a cool sky blue morning, 25 years ago in Northern Virginia, we are sitting in a Reston Town Center Hyatt hotel restaurant having breakfast around 8:00AM with a business colleague. A little over 40 minutes into our discussion, we heard some people talking quite loud in the bar next to us as they were then watching CNN to see the World Trade Center Twin Towers attack. As cell phones rang around us, they were all loved ones checking in and urging us to hurry home.
Walking to the parking lot, the proximity of our kids high school and middle school to the CIA campus created a feeling of great internal anxiety and it soon turned to fear.
Unknown to us at that moment, five terrorists were also onboard American Airlines Flight 77 that had already departed from Dulles (IAD) at 8:20AM headed to Los Angeles (LAX).
Little did we know that the AAL77 hijackers onboard that Boeing 757 flight had slept the night before a half mile from us in a Herndon, VA motel. 30 or so minutes into the flight over Ohio, with the terrorists now in control and the aircraft transponder off, it would make its turn back to Washington, DC to attack the West side of the Pentagon at 9:37AM.
We could now see the smoke rising in the distance on the Eastern horizon.
What this September 11th day is about every year beyond these memories, is the renewed vow of vigilance. A time to revisit all the reasons why you have made the decisions you have since that Tuesday morning twenty-five years ago. Never Forget that day. Never Forget why you wake each morning.
9/11 vigilance is about being adaptive. It is about resilience.
For those of us who have never paid the same price as those who have served, supported and are the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters or relatives of those who have, we can never know or really feel what they have. We can only pledge our vigilance in continuing our respective missions.
Most of all. The mission is not America's alone and the entire planet understands this. As they teach the history of 9/11 in the schools of New York City, Haiti, Chile, Pakistan, India and even Saudi Arabia, what do you think the lesson is about?
If it is not about vigilance and resilience, then we are doing our children a disservice. We must be preparing them for the future threats that this globe will be facing in the years and decades before us.
Whether it is the wrath of "Mother Nature" or the evil planning of AI or ordinary people does not matter. We can never predict exactly the day the hour or when and where the next attack will occur. Whether it will impact our buildings, bridges, rivers, schools or the Internet is unknown.
If all of us on this 3rd rock from the sun, have done our job teaching our kids about “Vigilance and “Resilience”, then we should all be able to have a peaceful nights sleep. Devoid of nightmares.
Remember that Tuesday in September across the globe, for the lessons we have all learned since that infamous day in New York City, Washington, DC and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
For the children, teach them the truth…
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