9/11 Spatial Computing Memories: The Hands of Life
I have spoken about this matter several times, in numerous places, to a variety of people. But I have not spoken to all of them simultaneously, which is exactly what it means to write a letter to the world. Let me try now.
On September 11, 2001, I was one of the many people working at Euro Brokers on the 84th floor of the South Tower of The World Trade Center. I had been there from the very beginning and was trained as an engineer, but later acquired an MBA and started to work in a managerial position. Thus, I had been managing a company for many years already and could watch the business being run, like how a sports team would act—quick, competitive, and totally relying on the ability of people to cooperate. We used to deal with large transactions between different financiers. The commission for one single operation was around fifty cents per million dollars. It’s quite an unusual way of conducting business, relying on speed and accuracy.
That morning was inconspicuous. I wish to make this point clear once and for all, as many people think of various characters involved in cataclysmic incidents having some kind of foreshadowing. But it wasn’t the case for us; it was just an ordinary Tuesday. The routine of my commute was the same. I did my job as I usually did. Thus, at 8:46 AM, I heard a loud bang, and then I saw fire through my window. My first thought, and the thought of many other survivors, was that it was some construction incident. It naturally took time for our brain to formulate a more appropriate explanation of what was happening.
We hadn’t understood yet that it was a plane attacking the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Just like people all over the world, we were watching the events on the television in our office while the tragedy was going on a hundred yards away. What seems unbearable to me afterwards is the announcement that our building’s sound system made—informing us that the South Tower was secure.
I will not use dramatic expressions to explain the event. However, I must admit that there was something in me that, by some chance, left to me, led me to the stairwell named Stairway A. I was not sure whether it was still available. But I made my decision instantly. It was based on the skills I acquired within the years of working for the company and some instinct. I knew engineers make decisions based on some suggestions formed by the situation, and they act but provide corrections after receiving more information.
That turn of events allowed me to hear a voice on the 81st floor. The voice belonged to a man who was stuck under some debris and drywall. I did not know who he was. Later I learned that the man was called Stanley. I was not sure whether assisting a stranger would deprive me of some precious time that could be used for saving my life. Nevertheless, I chose to help him, and my decision was not based on moral values. I concluded that it would have been irresponsible not to assist the man.
Stanley and I spent quite a long time going down eighty-one flights of stairs together. We did not know how much time we had. We climbed through rubbish. We crawled through smoke and through areas of strange silence. We met other people on our way—coworkers, unknown people, and people who were helping each other in simple and unremarkable ways that I think of more, frankly, than the explosions or the fire. Somewhere along that path, my engineering brain was doing what it usually does: determining our location, how many floors were left, what problems we faced, and calculating different actions we could take based on quiet calculations that allowed me to focus on something other than fear.
We left. We were among the last people who escaped the South Tower before it collapsed. I am not going to describe the noise and sight of that collapse; I only want to say that it happened behind us in a few minutes.
Sixty-one of my friends or colleagues who worked at Euro Brokers did not have the same fortune as I did. I would like to say that their names matter more than mine in this letter, even though I cannot list all sixty-one of them. I often think of one of them—a coworker by the name of Jose Marrero—who perished that day. A few months later, I dreamed of him. It was a very strange dream that cannot really be explained, but one’s life is different after such a dream. I also lost track of another coworker—Ron—who survived the accident but was severely burned.
What did become resolved, in its own strange way, was the business. By Wednesday — the very next day — a group of people from the Euro Brokers team had gathered at the W Hotel and were already looking for ways to be back in business again. Dell provided us with computers, and New York Telephone helped us with the communications lines. We were already generating revenue again within two days in the building after losing our office and some of our coworkers and generally thinking of the world as a predictable place. I would like to say this not to prove that resilience can be a real trophy. I would like to point out that people need to understand that continuing to function, supporting others, and performing their everyday duties is a difficult way of grieving.
People inquire into what I took away from that day, as if an experience like this can be distilled into a lesson as easily as pulling out a thorn. I’ve never given much credit to any lessons of this kind and have stuck to only a few of them.
The first and most important of them is that you can never truly predict what’s going to happen in the future despite all planning, worrying, and preparing you try to do. When I walked into the World Trade Center that morning, I did so the same way I had been doing for many years, believing it to be just another day. And it was not. In fact, it rarely is for anybody, although most of the time, the difference is so small that we fail to notice it.
The second important realization is that effective actions during difficult times have less to do with heroism than we may think. Most of the time, all it takes is to train your instincts long before the emergency. My engineering degree was useless in a situation of this kind but gave me the ability to think in terms of systems, layouts, and probabilities, which allowed me to make a quick but rational decision without hesitating in search of full data. I think everyone is capable of something alike, although the way this capacity is developed differs from person to person.
The third lesson refers to Stanley and to all of the little and unglamorous gestures of help performed on that staircase that day. We, those who helped each other, were not making moral judgments at the time. We were simply doing what the moment required of us. Over the years, I have come to realize that what we often think of as courage in terms of our daily lives is similar—it usually consists of small and immediate gestures that are dull at the time they occur. It does not seem heroic while performed, but rather a lot later.
The fourth lesson, and perhaps the one I often think about, concerns one event that happened long before September 11. When I was a kid, my grandmother, who had suffered from dementia, told me, “God bless you, Brian” during one of my last visits to her. I did not understand how that one moment would stay in my memory until the end of my life. Still, I think that it has left something in me—a kind of basic belief in usefulness that I will be able to help people in some way. I do not present it to my readers as a religious conviction; I do it for the sake of my own life experience: the memory of the old and dying lady changed my way of acting in one of the most terrible moments of my life years later.
Thus, this is what I want to tell the whole world.
You will never receive a prior note about the moment that matters. You will be taken by surprise by a common Tuesday that will change your future forever, and you will have nothing to say about it. However, you can exert some influence on what you will be by the time it becomes true, namely, whether you will have obtained skills, connections, and readiness to assist someone in need. The only thing that you cannot prepare for is the actual crisis itself.
Furthermore, I should say that you should not wait for extraordinary moments to apply your special abilities. My special feature revealed itself in the combination of spatial awareness along with the readiness to act when having incomplete information. Due to this very ability, I managed to save my own life as well as do something for Stanley. Most people will never face such a moment. However, everyone has potential skills, stability, or the ability to pay attention to detail; practice these for months without getting any credit for it.
Lastly, I want to add a few words about the modern tense. I couldn’t live through that day due to my dreams about the days to come or thinking about what had happened before that. Instead, I managed to survive it by facing the ground beneath my feet, the stairs in front of me, and the other person next to me. I believe that the source of stress in our daily lives isn’t the catastrophic kind of suffering, which is very bad, but rather the normal variety resulting from living in the wrong moment, replaying what happened in the past or waiting for what will happen in the future. This stairwell showed me in a very close way that the only floor that matters is the one you are standing on.
I lost friends and colleagues that day whose names deserve to be remembered more than mine. I think of Jose Marrero. I remember the sixty-one employees of Euro Brokers who were unable to descend those stairs due to circumstances. I carry their memory with me not as a burden but as a feeling of obligation to live a life worth the years I got after.
This is the message I want to share with the people. It’s not a teaching lesson that can be presented in a perfect way suitable for posters, but rather a story of an ordinary person who has learned the importance of living in the present, giving small help rather than large help, and using whatever help was given to you as long as you still have a chance to use it.
With gratitude for every one of the years since.
