Never Let Your Scars Fade

Tomorrow, we mark the 24th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001. For me, the passing of nearly a quarter-century hasn’t been enough to fade the scars. For me, those scars will never be allowed to fade.

Etched on my personal black box recorder are the memories I had of circa 1999, when I checked in at the World Trade Center lobby to report to work for my first day at Morgan Stanley. The firm’s training program for new traders took place in those Twin Towers, and in the weeks that followed, I spent many an afternoon high atop the Manhattan skyline, learning the business inside the iconic monument erected to celebrate capitalism, Western achievement and the wealth of nations.

Their boldness, their glaring simplicity, their twin-brother-like stance and their defiance of the rest of the New York City skyline were all part of the reason the World Trade Center was targeted for destruction by forces whose primary directive is death to the infidel.

On that idyllic September 11 morning, the blue skies were pierced by the stiletto insertion of commercial jets into the towers. I watched the events unravel from some 2,500 miles west. A condo nestled at the foot of the Hollywood Hills hardly seemed congruent to the billowing smoke oozing out of the structural siblings.

The only connection in my mind was… my mind.

A mind having been there just a couple of years earlier, wondering what it would be like to actually be there in that moment.

Wondering if I would have been incinerated along with the roughly 2,600 other lives that were extinguished that day.

Wondering if I would have acted heroically, the way so many did.

Wondering if I would have succumbed to the cowardice that so often accompanies paralytic fear.

I would like to think I could have been a hero. I need to think I would have been a hero.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to find out.

Instead, from far away, from the safety of Hollywood, I watched. All day, all night, I watched. Compelled by the horror, compelled by the enormity. Thinking to myself, “Will this be the world from here on?”

Would the world be plunged into war? At that moment, I wanted war. I wanted vengeance. I wanted to pound those responsible and the philosophy that animated these acts into a pulp.

I still want to.

I want to stoke the burn of that day. I want to remember the collapse of icons.

I want to keep calling out the life-hating, celebratory death cult of ideas that is radical Islam, and I want to rejoice in its defeat.

The scars of history must never be allowed to heal, and no salve of time should be permitted to mask the day America would be altered forever.

One way to keep those scars alive in our minds, especially if we would rather forget them, is to have a powerful piece of writing that takes us there.

I hope that the following verse I have written about that day punches you in the face with emotional prose, because that’s its intent. Hey, if you want to keep your scars from fading, you sometimes have to open up old wounds.

So, let yourself feel the blow of “The Cat and the Horror.”

There was a cat sleeping on my porch
She didn’t know what I had witnessed

The lacerated skyline of metropolis
A bleeding out of her twin sons

Flying lancets piercing steel hulls
Black smoke seasoning the azure sky
As the falling man descends to the concrete

Incendiary ideas born in Bronze
To please a prophet on a white horse

Hatred of the good for being the good
Crumbles a once-proud icon
Falling ash blankets District streets

A macabre concoction of concrete, bone, blood
Fury rises in the giant’s heart

Rage and revenge burn white
Countries targeted, let there be fight
Decades later, let there be flight

There is a cat sleeping on my porch
While the scars remain

— Jim Woods

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When Happy Loses Meaning

“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

–Carl G. Jung

The funny thing about happiness is we wouldn’t appreciate it much if we weren’t subjected to so much sadness. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, there is plenty of sadness in the world. That means there isn’t likely to be a paucity of opportunities to feel the infrequent yet highly sought-after sense of elation that is happiness.

Wisdom about money, investing and life can be found anywhere. If you have a good quote that you’d like me to share with your fellow readers, send it to me, along with any comments, questions and suggestions you have about my newsletters, seminars or anything else. Click here to ask Jim.

In the name of the best within us,

Jim Woods