On my first day of orientation at Healthsouth, we had a “fire safety” talk. The gist of the talk was that the as employees, should there be an emergency such as a fire, our duty was to “stand and protect” the patients. They were our first priority, and in an emergency, we’d be the last ones out of the building. This was a change from the previous policy, which was, the safety officer told us, “run like hell.” “Run like hell” was still the policy for the building next door, with which we shared a lobby and a fire alarm system but, in another recent change, we were no longer required to go into THEIR building to attempt to evacuate their patients. It seemed like common sense to me at the time; the idea of running into a building in which the actual employees were running out to “save” people seemed absurd.
I was thinking about this conversation that morning as I was reading 9/11 stories in the paper. One story told of a NYC firefighter. He was on his day off, and driving into New Jersey when he heard about the towers on the radio. He turned his car around and drove back into the city. When he encountered the traffic stop, he got out of his car and ran the rest of the way, joining his company at Ground Zero. He died there a few hours later.
It occurred to me that this man had run like hell in order to stand to protect. Yes, it was logically absurd that he would make so much effort to run into the buildings, but the bravery and selflessness of the act make logic obsolete. There’s a lot of hyperbole floating around today, but it is not an overstatement to say that bravery and selflessness are what makes this country great. I’m a huge fan of common sense but people are at their best when they abandon their own self-interest, and there is no greater example of that then the seemingly illogical idea of the responders running INTO a collapsing inferno.
There’s a lot of talk about what’s wrong with today’s generation. I’m not convinced it’s not the same thing that’s been wrong with EVERY generation, just focused into different toys and channels, but one thing I often pinpoint is who kids choose as their heroes. The pro athletes, the singers, the politicians. Of course the hard work those people do is worth celebrating, but I think we miss an opportunity when we allow a child to have Justin Bieber or Donovan McNabb as their number-one hero. Do we really want kids growing up convinced that they have to be super attractive and/or super wealthy? Certainly not, but that is the message they get from a lot from the common heroes.
One thing about 9/11 is that it reminds us what we should really celebrate. You can be an everyday Joe, you can live a mundane, unspectacular life, but if you respond the right way—whether running like hell or standing to protect or both, you become a hero. The quality of selflessness, and the unity that comes when people find that selflessness, that’s the version of the American dream we should celebrate, and teach the next generation to celebrate, and we should remember that every day of the year, not just on this anniversary. And we should hope we never have another day that teaches us those lessons in such a horrific way.
Much love.
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