Condoleezza Rice, pictured above, was the U.S. National Security Advisor to President Bush on September 11, 2001. Heather Delaney Reese, a political commentator who writes a Substack blog, said the following in her blog posting written on September 11th of this year, and published on September 12th:
Condoleezza Rice ... spoke at the Pentagon this morning and said ... “Here at the Pentagon, we feel the presence of 184 souls who were lost. Behind every name that we recite, there is a story. A life that mattered. A future unfulfilled. A void, a vast empty space, in the heart of a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, a sibling, a colleague, or a friend.” She continued, “Those of us in authority on that day did not see the nature of the danger in time to prevent the attack of 9/11. We did what we knew to do. But by definition, it was not enough.”
Reese's blog posting has prompted the following thought. The names of those who died on September 11, 2001 - at the Pentagon, and at the World Trade Center, and in the plane in which the passengers took action to prevent Flight 93 from attacking our nation's capital, in Washington, D.C. - are properly remembered and honored each anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. But.....
Who were those people? They were, truly, "you," and "me," and everyone of us. The people who did die (as we did not) are like each one of us. We, too - each one of us - has a life that matters and a future as yet still unfulfilled. Each one of us has a precious soul, of extraordinary worth.
As we remember those who died on 9/11, please let us not forget ourselves, and everyone else, too. Every one of us has a life that "matters." Our futures, however much we may have accomplished to this date, or may have failed to accomplish, is a life that is still all unfulfilled.
And our life "matters." And so does the life of our neighbor, our son or daughter, our teacher, the bus driver who pulled to the corner to pick me up, the Uber driver, the store clerk, the local official, the bank teller, the worker with whom we cross the street when that long light finally changes.
Shed tears for them, for all of us, for ourselves. We are SO precious, so valuable, so full of promise. Don't wait for death to make clear to you how wonderful and great are all those who live, whom we see every day.
Don't fail to love and appreciate every human soul you see and meet and know, until Death has stripped away the bundled insulation that obscures our heart-driven vision and that hides away the glorious truth.
Celebrate, with every person with whom you come in contact, the joys, and heartbreaks, and challenges that we know as "Life."
Let tears of joy and recognition spring forth now. We miss our opportunity if we hold back our appreciation of each other until some tragedy takes someone from us - someone like me or you - someone who, like me and you, has such a precious soul!
Image Credit:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/condi-rice-stupid-hounding-105771/
So deep and sincere that meaningful comment difficult.
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