Hitting Bottom

Madison sat in a sandbox. The sandbox doubled as a volleyball court that went mostly unused. She pushed a plastic shovel into the soft, dried sand, scooped some up and placed it in a pile within easy reach. Digging She was dreaming, playing out fantasies and creating worlds. At her age--she was 4 years old then--there was nothing more she could do. She had no experience so she had to create her own realities from the bits and pieces of life that she had picked up along the way. This digging, or dreaming, taught her that anything is possible, that the human mind is a vast expanse with unlimited capabilities. It trained her to reach out into the world with her own thoughts and creativity and construct her own visions. Her imagination wasn’t yet constrained to the limitations experience imposes on us. Her dreams and fantasies were as boundless as her naïveté.

From upon the hill above her I sat and remembered days from my own youth. It must have been the early ‘70s that I was thinking of. I was digging in the dirt and mud. No doubt I wore a tattered T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, dirty from the mud I was digging in, and a pair of beat up tennis shoes. I was not quite into my teenage years, but digging, I’ve learned recently, knows no boundaries when it comes to age. I was searching, searching for worms, bugs, and hidden treasures. I was digging to discover, to uncover more of the truths like those I had already learned. This digging was fueled by a curiosity that can never be satiated. I grew into adulthood searching the world for my place, as we all do. Through college and into the job market I searched for who I was. Forces from within me and from the outer world were working to define me, to shape me. And the digging I did as a youth was extended into adulthood.

If we are lucky we find a place in the world (and within ourselves) and then begin a search for greater things. If we are lucky we begin to dig with a purpose. Our digging will then shape the world and the lives around us. If we are lucky we learn to see the unlimited potential in others and we mine it for the benefit of all. As we age, what we learn from our digging and exploring is that it is difficult to create a world without boundaries. It is difficult to step outside of the things that we know and fly freely. Too many constraints force us to view the world and its inhabitants with a twisted eye.

Today I am forty-one years old. It is September 18, seven days removed from the tragedy of the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. On the television a man who looks to be my age is walking along the rubble in Manhattan. He wears a filter over his mouth and nose to protect him from the fumes and dust. He wears a helmet to protect him from falling debris. He wears the traditional boots and jacket of a New York City Fireman.

He walks along the debris picking up the pieces of a shattered world. He, like hundreds of others beside him, is digging out the pieces of life that were buried in the madness. I can only imagine what he sees and finds, what he smells and hears. A piece of torn clothing, a mangled wedding ring, and the heal of a shoe are among the things I imagine he finds. He, like the rest of us, is trying re-create a world that we had imagined into existence. He is trying re-create a lost reality from the bits and pieces he has picked up along the way.

Each time the rescue worker on the television bends down to pick something out of the rubble I bend with him. He reaches out for something and, like most around the world, I reach with him. Together we pull our dreams from the debris. Together we dig in the sand and dirt.

In an odd way the digging is finished. There are no other layers to uncover, no other secrets to unveil. We have, collectively and individually, hit bottom. The lessons that can be learned from the cleanup are lessons humankind has been taught since the dawn of civilization. There is nothing new to discover. Certainly, our friends and loved ones buried in the rubble deserve to be put to rest properly. But their retrieval, like their destruction, will not teach us any more than we should have long ago learned. It will not teach us that every life is precious, that each moment is worth savoring. It will not teach us that love is about the time and understanding and support we give to each other, that it is not in the distance we put between ourselves. How can it teach us today what we should have taken to heart millennia ago?

How can it not.

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