9/11 Update: 10 years later

I could tell you every single thing that happened to me on September 11, 2001. But that would be an awfully long post. What I remember most was not that I couldn’t believe it had happened, people are killing each other every day, what I wanted to know was how would I live my life in the aftermath. Would I change? Could I be better? On 9/11 I stood on 5th Avenue hugging a total stranger (Trudy) and we watched and cried as the first tower collapsed.


As the years have worn on I have been surprised at how little the world has changed. If nothing else it all seems to be a larger mess than it was on 9/11/01.

At the time the planes struck the Twin Towers I was sick and dying but didn’t know it. I had been reading texts on Zen around that time and started to play around with putting what I read into practice. In 2005 my illness took a sharp turn and it became clear that I was in very bad shape. I ended up having life-saving surgery. After that I started to play around more with what was possible with my consciousness.

In 2006, a full 5 years after the towers were toppled and 1 year after I had surgery I finally started to figure out where I wanted to take my life.

2006 served as Chair the Board of Directors of the Ali Forney Center

2007 completed a certificate course at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, completely altered my eating
        habits counseled clients in holistic health care. As I’m counseling people I realize that diet plays the
        most significant role in a person’s well-being, start to wonder if I should farm. Resign from the
       AFC Board of Directors

2008 decided it was time to head off the grid, saved money for some kind of new endeavor, volunteered
        at the Liz Christie Garden

2009 quit my day job, spent the growing season operating an organic market garden in W. Massachusetts
        and remained convinced that significant social change can be achieved through diet. In the autumn I
        earned money picking apples in Leominster, MA. Spent the year living below the threshold of
        poverty.
2010 returned to New York City, worked part-time, started to write part-time

       * While I was farming I kept thinking about Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. He makes the case that to be really good at something you have to have spent 10,000 hours practicing whatever that something is. I realized the only thing I’m any good at -- and have spent 10,000 hours doing -- is writing.


2010 switched to a vegetarian diet, continued to allow my consciousness to expand through meditation,
        worked on forestry projects (invasive species removal and an improvement cutting on 52 acres)

2011 continue working part-time, writing part-time, forestry, and finally start long-distance running

September 11, 2011
This will be my day off for the week. I do my best to observe a Sabbath of sorts. Saturday I will have completed my first race, I will have written (I’m in the home stretch of completing the novel), and I’ll probably cook a nice dinner and have a couple of beers to commemorate those who were killed.

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What I’ve decided is this: To be angry about what happened on 9/11/01 is to react. I have lived my life as a response. I want to die having attained the highest level of good that I can achieve. I want to die having done the best I could for myself and those around me. I want to die knowing that I did not settle.

I feel really bad for all the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 and I think we owe it to those innocent people who were killed to live full lives and to make the world a better place.