#IRememberWhen This day, September 11th 2001. I was sat in an office in London selling NLP Trainings and Breakthrough Coaching. A friend called me at work and in somewhat garbled fashion asked if I’d seen what had happened to the twin towers.
He was a massive football fan so I automatically thought that some football team had a crashing defeat and had come down from the top of the league. He tried to describe what was going on however I didn’t fully comprehend the full extent of the situation until I got home that night.
This was well before the days of smart phones and news at your fingertips. When I finally arrived home I just sat in front of the TV, barely able to believe my eyes and ears.
I kept thinking that it must be a promo for the next Hollywood blockbuster movie because this type of thing couldn’t and shouldn’t be happening in real life to real people in this day and age.
I was also just getting ready to head off to the Samaritans Annual Conference in York and that year our special guest speaker was Chad Varah, the Founder of the Samaritans movement. He founded the movement in 1953 when he realised that after sitting and having a talk with his secretary, by the time people came to speak to him they were (at the time surprisingly) feeling better. He was particularly moved by the story of a 14 year old girl who had taken her own life simply because no one had explained what her menstrual cycle was, and believing she had some kind of sexually transmitted disease had committed suicide.
The Samaritans conference took on a new meaning and significance that year because the power and importance of having an outlet and someone just to talk to, someone to hear you, someone to offload your feelings to, came very sharply into focus.
The Samaritans is a very different kind of listening to the work that I do now as a Coach and Therapist, however for those that simply need to talk it provides a valuable service and is fully staffed by volunteers who willingly give up their time to sit and answer those constantly ringing phones.
For more about the history of the Samaritans and Chad Varah click here
So where are we now?
Where is the world today some 13 years on?
What did the act, and everything that came thereafter achieve?
I would hope that the axis of the world in terms of the human spirit, compassion, resilience, and the opening of hearts shifted that day.
I cannot even begin to imagine how it must feel to have lost someone in that tragedy. To not have your loved one or friend ever come ‘home’ not even for their final send off, and then to have that moment replayed over and over again each year as the news and media does a retrospective.
There were still miracles that day. People saved on that stairwell, people found in little air pockets, people who missed their flight or bus to work. And no, I’m not interested today in the conspiracy theories about how many people received a call not to go to work.
Conspiracy or not, real people, flesh and blood people, were lost that day and in the days that followed, on both sides.
I have no point to this post, except to reflect back. To think of those who have walked the earth and left it in a way that most wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy. To think of those who were left behind and the many who understandably have not been able to move on like those of us who were far removed and watching it unfold at the end of a TV tube have been able to.
I don’t know the grand design and can’t explain exactly why things happen in the way that they do, so today I just wish the world a good day, and hope that in terms of the evolution of the human race that we are all on track.
Marilyn Devonish ♥