Taken… for Granted
Dr. Pfister, in a recent visit to the 9/11 memorial.
It was probably the second or third week that I was having dinner - as a freshman in college - that I realized how good a cook my mother was all those years…
Yes, I had totally taken my mother’s cooking for granted… just as I had taken for granted how my clothes were always clean and we always had fresh towels in the bathroom!
Just this past week, my wife and I returned from three days in NYC taking my son back to college. We spent the entire three days walking on concrete. The nearest park was Central Park, 15 blocks to the North. Thus, I never saw any grass, the yard variety, and I felt sorry for those dogs (there were quite a few who had to do their business on the trash lined along the sidewalk).
I never knew how many things in Medina we take for granted (silence and fresh air could also be added to the list) until I spent a few consecutive days in the Big Apple.
You really should try it sometime… getting away to a truly large city. Cleveland is too small and it has grassy areas and there are quiet areas, like Wade Park. Try Toronto, L.A., etc. and you’ll come home with a heightened appreciation for Medina!
I’m sure it’s in one of my psych books - that it’s human nature to take what we have and what we see every day for granted - until we lose it, can’t see it, or don’t feel it.
What do I mean by don’t feel it? Tuesday morning of this past week, my family and I visited the Ground Zero memorial of 9/11. We missed the actual attack time by one hour. Twenty years earlier, at 8:45 a.m. on a Tuesday morning (September 11, 2001), 19 militants associated with the Islamic group, al Qaeda, showed us the vulnerability of our heretofore taken-for-granted American Freedom!
As I stood there peering into the Memorial pool at Ground Zero, I realized that I didn’t feel as invincible as I once did as a younger man…
And further contemplation drove me to the thought that unless we begin to make definitive changes in our country, and soon, the Freedom that we so cherish could slip through our fingers and vanish as permanently as the Twin Towers!
As I sat in the garden between the two Memorial pools, I couldn’t help but think of two other structures in the area. Across the street is the World Trade Center Transportation Hub’s Oculus Building and the Statue of Liberty at the end of the street. The more I sat there and reminisced over what I had seen the last two days, the more I visually felt the uncanny relationship shared by these three structures and their statement on Freedom.
Lady Liberty, a gift from France, stands in the New York Bay as a universal symbol of Freedom.
The website, edsitement.neh.gov, goes on to say the statute is the Mother of Exiles, greeting millions of immigrants and offering them the hope and opportunity for a better life in America. She stirs the desire for freedom in people around the globe and has come to represent the United States itself! President Grover Cleveland, in his acceptance speech of the Statue of Liberty on behalf of the U.S., said it best: “We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected.” (October 28th, 1886.)
At the risk of appearing like I’m taking sides or choosing one side of the aisle over another, I’m truly making an observation that our nation’s compass over the last 10 years has spun as wildly as if it were placed over the earth’s magnetic pole.
As a people, we have lost sight of the very basic principles on which this country was built and the core values that the rest of the world respected us for. The Preamble to the Constitution states: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union… and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America… and it shall be the supreme law of the land!”
How our leadership has misconstrued and misrepresented what our Forefathers worked so hard to achieve is beyond me. We need to hold our leaders, at all levels of government, accountable for their actions and remind them that the Constitution was written for everyone and is the Law of the Land. Only through an honest translation of the Constitution can the Statue of Liberty stand for a more perfect Union.
Moving on, the Oculus building was designed by Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava, to replace the old PATH train station destroyed by the 9/11 attack.
The architect, in an incredibly creative gesture of peace and hope, designed the Oculus to resemble a white dove leaving a child’s hands. Tuesday, when I walked through this magnificent pure white edifice, a string orchestra was playing in the center. I was taken back by the beautiful balance of the acoustically clear music and the gentle rays of sunlight coming through the roof, as they combined to heighten the already stimulated senses. I could actually feel the stress leaving my body and a sense of well-being replacing it. It was a most interesting and unexpected feeling that came over me. (I only had one coffee that morning and I’m not on any meds!)
Oculus is the Latin word for “eye”; and if you stand in the center and look up at the roof, with an oblong slit open to the sky, it truly does resemble an eye. The stark white color of the Oculus truly gives us not only the feeling of remembrance, but one of hope and the need for both the city and country to move forward but not to forget the past.
Without trying to sound too cliché, the Oculus, I feel, represents a deeper meaning. As coaches tell their players, “keep your eye on the ball and your head in the game,” we must all keep our eyes on what is truly important in our daily lives as we travel through this journey called life.
Humans, as a whole, love Freedom. And only with Freedom can we truly realize our divine-given meaning for being.
We never saw 9/11 coming! We have been forewarned.
The World Trade Center site, or Ground Zero as some refer to it, is a very somber 14.6 acres dedicated to remembering those everyday individuals, like you and I, who died mid-stride going about their daily lives. The Oculus serves as the white symbol of hope that the Statue of Liberty’s torch, which lights the path to Freedom, will never be extinguished!
This Saturday, September 11, 2021, is the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
Please take 60 seconds in a head-bowed moment of silence, at exactly 8:46 am, to remember the 2,977 individuals killed in the four attacks on that day in America that will live on in infamy. And please take the rest of your life to keep freedom in our streets and in your heart.
- Dr. Pfister