Still in Awe

I am still in Awe of the World Trade Center twin towers that used to be. The twin towers.

My job at Deloitte got me the opportunity to live next to, near and work by them. I went up the elevator reaching the top of the 105 floors in 59 seconds. I even worked in the towers for 2 months. (My old passport has a security stamp at the back which I will cherish.)

There was never a walk by the twin towers when I did not stare up into the sky in sheer awe. They were just like how Ayn Rand wrote about building tall steel and concrete sky scrapers functional like the human body – without appendages.

I know today is a tragic anniversary, a reminder of a barbaric cowardly act. My prayers are with those who lost loved ones.

But today I choose to remember the awe the twin towers evoked in me and the American spirit – to be the biggest in the world for everything they do (not that being the biggest is everything in my part of the philosophical world) that inspired me.

Like Wordsworth said … I choose to “find strength in what remains“.

What though the radiance which was once so bright; Be now for ever taken from my sight, 
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;