The Heart of the Matter

For-give (verb \fər-ˈgiv\) transitive verb

1 a : to give up resentment of or claim to requital for <forgive an insult> b : to grant relief from payment of <forgive a debt>

2: to cease to feel resentment against (an offender): Pardon <forgive one's enemies>

I am not a native New Yorker, and I certainly identify in my Jersey roots; however, I have adopted New York City as my home and the place I love being most in the world. (Okay, MAYBE San Francisco is a very very close second). Today is September 9, but if you were in this region of the country or just a regular person in Whatever, USA, it's hard not to think about how the world changed on a beautiful end-of-summer day in 2001, when two jet liners were used as weapons to attack the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.

I worked a majority of my career on "the Street," but I was not there at the time of the attacks (I was expected in the office later that day). In fact, the last I remember of the towers were early that very morning, 2 am to be exact, as I left my office (I was a bit of a workaholic those days...ah, to be in my 20s again). The car service took me up the West Side Highway to return me to Jersey City, and I always looked at the Towers as I drove past them. I know it sounds cliche, but I'll always remember how they looked eight hours before they no longer existed.

In 2011, however, we are approaching the solemn 10 year anniversary of the attacks. Of course, no year is complete without a "credible threat" to our national security. What people outside of New York don't realize is that according to the Federal "Terror Levels" (remember, those color-coded schematics) is that we are always at a heightened level of vigilance. Just now, the police presence is more visible, and we see more machine guns. We're used to this by now. At least, I am. Having worked downtown, and most notably by the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve, I am used to seeing police presence with their machine guns at the ready. A little excessive? Perhaps. The thought is to give us a secure feeling (though to be honest, seeing those guns out in the open doesn't really make me feel secure, it scares the crap out of me).

As I said earlier, we're approaching the 10 year anniversary, but New York City is faced with the reality of this absence and that day every day. Even if you don't live or work downtown, the void still surrounds us, and something changed that day in New York. Maybe innocence. But as avant garde artist Art Spiegelman called that area, it's the "Shadow of No Towers."

Now I don't know if it's this year that's different, but it seems more people are prominent with either displaying their patriotism...or perhaps it's something I've just seen and was acutely aware, but didn't pay any mind to it TILL now, the 10th anniversary. However, I was walking around midtown Manhattan this morning, and a few things caught my attention. For one, there was a lot of foreign news vehicles around the area. Some Argentian television station asked me for my opinions about the city, and I gladly gave them (I'll discuss them in a minute). But when I walked away, I noticed that someone walking into an establishment (clearly, a union worker based on his gear) was wearing a shirt commemorating 9-11. The back of it was a design of the towers, with the American eagles around it and a flag, with the following slogan:

"Never Forget...Never Forgive."

Which led me to this question, the "heart of the matter." Being in this region, and being an American, I know that I cannot forget 9-11. Not only did the city change, everyone changed and the country changed too. We see things that we accept as normalcy now, such as restrictions of liquid on passenger flights, full-body scanners, taking off our shoes as we walk through the detectors (I often joke that some day soon, we'll just have to be buck naked walking through those things). I was reading about a class based on September 11th at Rutgers University has students interviewing families who were directly affected by the events and their stories resulting from their projects, and the overall knowledge that 9-11 is a part of their lives that they are forced to carry, but they have to also make a conscious decision to make it a part of them, and not define them. I think that goes for all of us, whether we were directly impacted by it or not. September 11th is a part of us.

Yet, what I saw on this guy's shirt, he probably didn't think too much about it. It's still weighing on me, though. As the saying went, "Forgive and Forget," but one does not forget but one can forgive? I've been trying to look for who, if anyone, would be worthy of forgiving?

I'm not sure. Things have changed. Osama Bin Laden was assassinated in the spring. Downtown Manhattan has changed considerably, some for worse, some for better. The "Freedom Tower" has made a lot of progress in the last year, and the development commission made it a point to make the area a hub. A memorial is going down there, but at the same time, a push was made to make Lower Manhattan more of a place to congregate and live/work/eat/breathe. For better or worse, LoMa was not pushed to be a residence.

The terrorists certainly did not win if people are willingly living down there now.

I think the most important part of this day is to not forget. To honor the victims and their families. And to honor our country. George W. Bush once said that freedom was attacked, and freedom will be defended. As we see, this ongoing "War on Terror," whether you agree with it or not, still defends that freedom daily.

But the forgiveness thing got to me. I mean, who exactly would we forgive if that's the case? The men who carried out the attacks are dead. The masterminds are being brought to justice. Bin Laden is no longer around. And his henchmen are being brought to justice too. Not one of them ever showed remorse for that loss of life. That, to me, is not worthy of forgiveness.

Perhaps there are those who look for a scapegoat who want to blame something, someone, an ideology, an abstract ideal that one cannot put their finger on but know it was the center of the ethos of carrying out such a hideous attack. We know, though, that these extremist belief systems are not indicative of the whole belief system. Perhaps it's part of the healing process to understand that people of all walks of life died as a result of these attacks. Assessing blame is not enough. To move forward, isn't forgiveness a part of that healing?

Forgiving may be the wrong word. We won't forget, and justice is still being served. THAT is what is important about that day: honoring those we have lost and making sure their honor is preserved by pursuing those who masterminded the evil behind it. I may process this whole forgiving/forgetting quotient, but honor is the most important part of this day and going forward.