Flying Blind...

There was nervous laughter as we entered the elevator. Nobody could process the events of that morning. Laughter. We didn’t know how to respond. But everyone was vacating the building. Not just our building, but every building….well, at least every tall building in The Loop, in downtown Chicago. Less than an hour before, I was watching the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapse on itself. A single tower…I was so stunned it didn’t even register to me that the North Tower was already gone. And there had been crash at The Pentagon as well? I heard about that collision when I was riding the elevator up to my desk on the 44th floor. Three crashes? What the hell was going on?

Everyone was looking at each other, stunned. All that we knew was that the World Trade Center was gone, The Pentagon has also been attacked. And then the news was announced that there was a fourth hijacked plane, heading towards some unknown location! The information was scattered and sketchy. All we knew was that we had to get out of downtown….out of tall buildings….away from tall buildings.

The trip home on the elevated train was strangely quiet. Nobody was talking; everyone was worried….always looking at the skies….piecing together the events….not fully understanding that our world had been changed forever.

And that fourth hijacked fourth plane…flying out there in the skies somewhere….full of frightened passengers, knowing that so little time remained before their plane crashed…deciding that their only option was to fight back. And were there more? Where there planes hijacked at O’Hare? Thankfully, the FAA had grounded all flights. That was cold comfort; people had died, were dying, or were about to die.

And nobody felt safe.

And here we are navigating another national tragedy. Safe in our homes, fighting (or maybe just waiting out), the invisible danger outside. A tiny virus killing just as many citizens per week as died in 9/11. And because the enemy cannot be seen, so many of us don’t believe it. It’s a hoax; our pilot told us so. So while our medical personnel are fighting the battle, endangering themselves for our benefit, others are refusing to accept the fact that we are on a collision course towards disaster. And in refusing to social distance, those blinded by their own fear or ignorance are inadvertently leading helping the enemy.

And nobody ever felt safe again…