Seeing things differently

It is strange how differently we can experience the same event at different stages of life.

On 11 September 2001, I was 29 and working for an American publishing company. Our head office was in Illinois, and I remember so clearly that afternoon in our UK office when our connection with the US simply disappeared. Emails stopped, communication went quiet and, gradually, we began to understand that something terrible was unfolding.

Like so many people, I watched the images from New York on television. Yet if I am truthful, I’m not sure I really took in the human scale of what I was seeing. The scenes were so far outside ordinary experience that they had an almost unreal quality to them and I think my 29-year-old brain struggled to process the fact that this was happening to real people, in real time.

This week, I have found myself affected by it in a very different way, and perhaps that is simply one of the things that happens as we get older. At 29, it felt as though much of life still lay ahead of me. Loss was something I understood, of course, but not in quite the same way that I understand it now. With age comes more experience of people, relationships, change, endings and the fragility of ordinary life.

So when I have watched some of the 9/11anniversary coverage, I have found myself thinking less about the enormous images that came to define that day, and much more about the individual people within them.

People who had simply gone to work. People who had caught a train, made coffee, spoken to their colleagues, complained about the traffic, planned their evening and assumed that the day would continue in the usual way. In what followed, there were also so many stories of people turning towards one another - for help, and comfort.

I have thought a lot about all these people and my change in perspective surrounding 9/11.

I have also reflected that I value the connections I make with people so much more now than I did 25 years ago. I appreciate that everyone has their own worries, joys and histories, and when over time I get to know little pieces of those lives, I feel it is a real privilege.

I am reminded that human connection does not always have to be complicated or profound - sometimes it is enough to simply be in the same room with other people for a while. I am mindful that a meaningful life is not only found in the big moments, but in the ordinary encounters and relationships that quietly shape our days.