For the week of  Sept. 26 - Oct. 2, 2001

A country finds its soul

Commentary by ADAM TANOUS

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The questions can be overwhelming at times. But tragedy has a way of simplifying decisions, clarifying vision. All that once seemed vitally important, suddenly falls away. And what we are left with are the simple and pure elements of life.

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Here’s an image that remains. It is that of a 767 jet seemingly pasted to the air, in and among skyscrapers. The plane holds an angle not quite level with the earth, and has a grainy quality to it, perhaps because the plane is actually moving a couple hundred miles per hour and is not fixed, as it is in my mind.

The graininess and odd orientation of the jet only adds to the surreal nature of it all. It could easily be a mock up—a model plane put before a two-dimensional, New York skyline and captured on film—as if it were a high school photography class project. It is not that.

In a time when both awful and poignant images abound, it’s hard to say why this particular one seems to hold forth in my mind’s eye. Perhaps it is because I imagine it as a moment when thousands of people in that skyscraper, that plane, on the ground, and in the web of family and friendship all over the country still sense their world as being whole. Spouses and children and friends are where we imagine them to be. Lives have a meaningful arc to them. It might be the last moment when the world seems true to our understanding of it. It might also be the first moment of our understanding of ourselves.

It was 225 years ago that we took up arms to defend what were deemed "unalienable Rights … Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Despite the sometimes convoluted nature and complexity of life today, that, in sum, is all we’ve ever been after. Doggedly we have pursued those goals. And after all those years of public debate, economic gains, social strife and resistance, we had nearly achieved them. Life and liberty were certainly ours, and the pursuit of happiness was a realistic expectation of most Americans.

In a day, all of those gains came into question. In a day, we went back to defending life and redefining liberty. In some ways we are starting over, which, even before Sept. 11, was the theme of America and its people. This time, however, we are fumbling about in the rubble, literally and metaphorically, searching for ourselves.

It is true that in the past our pursuit of happiness has been, at times, ostentatious. We are a wealthy nation. Our tendency is to be a flashy nation. But it turns out that when buildings are falling from the sky and lives are aflame, all that flash is not who we are at all. That is all just so much whimsy and style.

What I and many others saw and felt emerging through the smoky debris of that Tuesday were people so much tougher, more compassionate, more loyal and more intensely connected to one another than we ever would have thought. I think we were surprised by ourselves.

I think our enemy was surprised too. This, in the end, may turn out to be the one great miscalculation the perpetrators of this attack made. They figured out the holes in security, how to fly planes, how to convince people to kill thousands. What they didn’t have a feel for is the American people. How could they?

In all of our showiness, what sometimes gets forgotten is that there is a reason this nation has led all others throughout its short history. It has something to do with natural resources and geography, but more, I think, to do with the character of the people who came and continue to come to this country.

This all may sound like patriotic bluster, but it comes from listening to and watching the stories of people and their actions over the course of two weeks. These are actions of generosity: people organizing fundraising events in little towns across the country, people sending food, their paychecks, boots, letters, blankets, flashlights, or whatever they have to people they don’t know nor will ever know. These are actions of bravery: people carrying other people down dozens of floors, firefighters and policemen stepping into a building that surely they knew would soon collapse. Actions of compassion and support have become our common currency.

And for what gain? That great American wealth we hear so much about? Fame? Not a chance. No, Americans are doing these things simply because they are able and strong enough to do them.

There has always been the concern that our economic and social systems are too Darwinian, that everyone just wants to take care of their own little patch of the universe. Well, that just turned out not to be true. When things were as bad as they can get, what was revealed was a country much more democratic, in the literal sense, than it ever knew it was. People who were better off helped those who weren’t, whether with money or with their lives or with emotional support. While Blanche DuBois knew it all along, millions of American have learned they could indeed depend on the kindness of strangers.

The questions keep coming up: What will our lives be like now? How will we travel? How will we rebuild? What’s to become of our lives?

The questions can be overwhelming at times. But tragedy has a way of simplifying decisions, clarifying vision. All that once seemed vitally important, suddenly falls away. And what we are left with are the simple and pure elements of life.

What we do now is start with the littlest of actions and move on from there. These are actions as little as lingering at the edge of the school yard as our children slip into their budding world of friends or hanging around the family dinner table a bit longer. We might calm down, worry less. We might just savor the simplicity of life thrust upon us. Because, when it comes down to it, this is our life now. This is what we have, all we have, perhaps all we’ll ever need.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.