I remember I woke about five minutes before my cell phone alarm. I was sleeping in the guest bedroom of my friend Ryan’s parent’s home in Wrightwood California, a tiny ski resort town in the San Bernadino mountains. As I stretched and yawned Ryan swung my door open. “Dude, they bombed the World Trade Center!”
Like millions of Americans I sat glued in front of the TV all day. We were supposed to do a mountain bike ride but we never left our pajamas and sweat pants. Ryan’s Mom nervously cooked a breakfast that none of us really ate. I called my sister, I called my Mom. They were okay. I tried calling my cousin Kate who was living in New York near Ground Zero. The call couldn’t connect. She was staying in an apartment across from the towers and I later learned spent that day watching people jump from the buildings. I was supposed to begin work on a game show called SMUSH for the USA channel the next day and I got a call saying taping would be delayed for a week.
There are so many challenges and stresses and uncomfortable realities that we face each day. So much joy and abundance surrounds but just reading Google News can instantly evaporate my ability to feel grateful for another breath. Paraphrasing a poem by Nelson Mandela, the man says that it is our Light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
I am about to walk out the door and face a set of very difficult uncertainties. Still, I have the ability to create beauty as opposed to ugliness. Nobody can remove this choice other than myself, nobody can take that from me. I am still alive. And so are you.
Beautiful.