Sept. 11 has been on my heart a lot lately.

It started a few days ago when I was doing some shopping at a local record store and noticed a used copy of The Concert for New York City, the CD from the October, 2001, benefit for Sept. 11 victims and emergency workers. I bought it as a gift to myself.

Sept. 11 affected me deeply, as it did everyone. From growing up across the Hudson River from the Twin Towers to working as a first-responder to still being a drilling reservist on Sept. 11 and volunteering for a short stint at Naval Air Station Lemoore in the days afterwards, there was a powerful sense of change and loss that day.

More than five years later, while working at my desk and listening to the CD, I re-experience the feelings from Sept. 11: sadness, grief, anxiety and rage; also pride, patriotism, unity, resolve and even hope — hope because that time presented a great challenge as well as a great opportunity, and that opportunity was both personal as well as national. 

It was personal in the sense that it gave us permission to reflect on what we wished to do with our lives; as a people with a remarkable array of possibilities, what did we want to commit ourselves to?

In a society that had become hyper-consumerist and more than a little jaded, genuine patriotism and civic concern of that time was cleansing; it granted us permission to repudiate selfishness and personal isolation and believe in the possibility of belonging to something far greater than ourselves. We poured out donations, prayers and blood. We dove in and asked, “How can I help?”

Sept. 11 was a national opportunity in the sense that America was presented with a new occasion to lead a changing world. We saw pictures from around the globe: grief and mourning in places like Bosnia, Belfast and Jerusalem; Queen Elizabeth ordering the “Star Spangled Banner” played at Buckingham Palace; and Parisian headlines reading, “Nous Sommes tous les Americains!” NATO enacted Article V: an attack against one is an attack against all.

In the world’s tears, we saw how much we are loved and how great the expectations of America are. Sept. 11 was an attack on the United States, but it was also a salvo indicating an escalation of fear and violence across a chasm that is separating two worlds. The world was seeking American leadership.

And so it is that I come to realize the feeling that I experience five years after Sept. 11: mourning — mourning for a period of unprecedented unity when Americans stood shoulder-to-shoulder and an expectant and adoring world looked to us with an outpouring of affection and hope.

The five years since Sept. 11 have been a sad time for America. Once-in-a-lifetime unity slipped away and was replaced by toxic divisiveness. Americans turned on each other and proclaimed, based on either opposition to or advocacy for military action in Iraq, that their fellow citizens are unpatriotic or jingoistic, hand-wringing appeasers or easily-duped reactionaries. We saw the world grow less inclined to follow our lead; we felt frustrated at another catastrophic loss in another great American city: New Orleans.

This holiday season, I have decided to mourn no longer. The Concert for New York opened with David Bowie performing the evening’s anthem, “Heroes,” the refrain of which is, “we can beat them, forever and ever, we can be heroes, just for one day.” This, I believe, is the message for Americans now as it was then. We can be heroes. We can decide our own destiny. There is nothing that politicians can give or take away from us, because they work for us. There is nothing that cowards hiding in caves can do to destroy us unless we do the work for them. We can be intolerant of debate and differing opinions or we can embrace them as the lifeblood of our democracy and the crucible from which the best decisions are made.

For myself, I have decided to hold onto these feelings and dedicate the rest of my life to the memory of Sept. 11, 2001. This means continuing to pursue creating what I believe to be positive political change at the community level, advocating for public safety and for the everyday American heroes who work to keep this whole thing going, encouraging all of us to keep in our hearts what is best about America and holding forever in my mind the image of a moment, right around this time in 2001, when for a season we lived our national motto: E Pluribus Unum — Out of many, One.

Happy holidays, a prosperous new year, peace on earth and God bless America.

(Pope lives in American Canyon.)