Luke Blocher

Opinion contributor

I was in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. Like all of us, I will never forget that day. But believe it or not, there is something about the days and weeks that followed 9/11 in New York that I actually miss. Something that we seem to have lost entirely today, and at great cost: a shared understanding of the world around us, and a common purpose. For me, that feeling was as unforgettable as anything else.

Before the first plane hit the World Trade Center that morning, I was on a bus traveling down 2nd Avenue on my way to work. At some point during the ride, I began to notice a lot of cell phones ringing. Suddenly, the bus stopped and the driver told us to get out. Still not knowing what was going on, I somehow stepped off the bus at one of the few spots in lower Manhattan where you had a full view of the Twin Towers – so nothing obstructed my view of the gaping, burning hole in one of them.

Knowing only that a plane had hit the buildings, I began walking to a friend's apartment near the Twin Towers with the vague idea I would drop my stuff there and go see if I could help. But then as I walked from Church to Broadway on Chambers Street, the ground began rumbling under my feet. I ran to Broadway only to see a storm of dust and debris racing up the street toward me. The first tower had fallen.

I joined the crowd running north on Broadway before settling into a long walk back to my apartment. Slowly, through car radios and the occasional cell phone that worked, we came to understand what had happened.

Aside from the intense shock of it all, what I remember most about those moments and days immediately following the attack – as we waited vainly in line to give blood (too many people were giving blood for what turned out to be not much need), or looked at the hundreds of missing posters on seemingly every flat surface – was the strange feeling of what could only be described as a common consciousness.

Although New York City is famously diverse and also sometimes called the loneliest place on Earth, I found connection, common ground, and resolve in every eye I met walking the streets in those weeks. We were all thinking about the attack, the lives in the balance, and what we could possibly do to help. This shared understanding and purpose felt invigoratingly new then. It would be positively alien today.

History will mourn how much we could have accomplished with that sense of unity. But what was a missed opportunity then is a desperate need now. Gun violence, the opioid epidemic, racial wealth and health gaps, wage stagnation, health care costs, public transit: these are enormous challenges, yet we often can’t agree on common facts, let alone mobilize around a shared purpose.

The public square is too regularly a shouting match, staged from our respective corners. This distance between so many of us has left in its wake a degraded political culture that simply can’t tackle big problems, or sometimes even little ones. And so those problems fester, trust in our institutions continues to dwindle and the distance grows.

As we join to honor the memory of 9/11, then, let’s look each other in the eyes and find that connection and resolve again – like so many of us did on Fountain Square last week in the aftermath of the Fifth Third Center shooting. Let’s commit once more to coming together around causes bigger than ourselves and our differences. This moment demands nothing less.

Luke Blocher is a Clifton resident who lived in New York City from 2001-2005.