We Are All New Yorkers Today

Sunday night, the world was riveted by the unexpected news that Osama bin Laden is dead, killed by courageous Navy Seals in a daring operation in a suburb of Islamabad. Evidently, bin Laden had been hiding in plain sight for years, a few blocks from a Pakistani military academy.

For New Yorkers, the news was a source of both instant jubilation and somber reflection.

Anyone who lived in or around this great city 10 years ago will never forget the numbing sight of those great towers crippled and falling. Within a two hour commuting radius of the city, every town, every village, lost somebody. For months after, thousands worked in the smoldering ruins to extract remains and try to make sense out of the mass murder.

The sight of those towers, black smoke billowing into the bright blue sky, is engraved in our memories. Not a beautiful, breezy, cloudless morning passes without bringing to mind that gorgeous day when planes fell from the sky a decade ago.

By remembering New York, I do not mean to exclude the destruction of the Pentagon by one of the four planes sent by bin Laden on their suicide missions. Nor have I forgotten the courageous passengers on board United Flight 93 who stopped one of the planes from slamming into the Capitol or the White House by sacrificing their lives in a corn field in Shanksville, PA.

But New York was a civilian target. The World Trade Center was an office building filled with workers. Whatever one’s politics or nationality, the murder of civilians is indefensible in any time and under any moral code. For that reason, New York occupies a special place in the hearts and minds of all the world’s citizens.

There is great satisfaction in knowing that such violence and wanton killing finally has its day of reckoning. 65 years ago, on V-E Day at the end of World War II, crowds poured into the streets to celebrate. Likewise Sunday night, thousands of people gathered in Times Square and at Ground Zero, drawn spontaneously by an irresistible force to be together, to share this moment of success after ten long years of war.

But the whoops of success and the pride in our flag are colored by a darker reality. The world remains dangerous and alert to the risk of revenge. Like a primitive blood feud, we could be caught in a cycle of violence that seems without end.

And those spontaneous crowds Sunday night? How young they seemed, filled with college-age students whose entire sentient lives have been lived in a world of terror. Even as they celebrate the elimination of this evil actor, their parents can’t help but feel that they were born into a world without innocence, into a world that will bring more days like 9/11 than days like this.

Wherever in the world you were the day the Twin Towers fell, you felt a kinship for the people of New York. The city and its people were attacked but they refused to be defeated. They persevered and life returned to normal. They remained steadfast in their unrelenting commitment to catch this SOB.

And on cloudless days they looked into the sky and remembered that day.

Today, we can all feel like New Yorkers: Relieved, reflective, and resolved to carry on. Americans know adversity. But they also have uncommon determination to stay the course. They set an example for all people of good will that principles and values are worth fighting for. And that justice can and will be done.

[Editor's Note: This posting originally appeared on the MxEnergy MXpressions blog on May 2.]