It was the beginning of the end for me.
Most of us remember where we were on the morning of September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Myself, I was sitting in my office at the law firm where I worked, preparing for a hearing later that morning in bankruptcy court. It was one of several hearings I had over the next few days, and I was anxious about not having enough time to prepare for them. I had arrived early that morning, probably a little after six a.m., early enough to be the first person in the office.
As usual, I was working in silence. Maybe I had a CD playing; certainly not the radio or the televison.
As nine o’clock approached and no one else came to work, I grew more and more annoyed. Where was my assistant? Where were the paralegals? Did someone cancel work and not tell me?
At that moment, my client called. Her voice was excited. She wanted to know if there would be court today.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t there be?”
“Don’t you know what’s going on?” Her voice was thick with a mixture of emotions. “Go find a television.”
I ended the call and sat for a moment, listening to the soft electric sounds that make up the background noise of any office. I glanced at my watch. It was now after nine o’clock. I stood up and went off in search of a television, alarmed at the darkened hallways and empty offices. In a conference room, I turned on a television just in time to see a thick column of smoke swirl away from a skyscraper. Words on the screen identified the building as the World Trade Center. I thought the building was on fire. I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
*
Court was cancelled that day.
Six years as a lawyer and court had never been cancelled. I had driven to court in rainstorms, in windstorms, in snowstorms when other drivers had refused to budge from the security of their garages. I had driven to court during a travel advisory. But on this morning, as the nation sat watching the horror of the day unfold, court was cancelled.
My client was ecstatic. Despite my assurances that Court would, indeed, resume again and that the final outcome of the hearing was inevitable, she received news of the postponement like a death row inmate receiving news of a pardon.
Later, as I sat in a conference room watching the news, listening to the assorted theories of reporters, anchorpersons, the paralegals in our office, the other attorneys, I felt a bit disconcerted. Once again, a major event had happened—perhaps the major event of this century—and I had almost missed it because I was sitting in my office preparing for a hearing the outcome of which was already decided by law and precedent. No matter how I tried to justify the situation in my mind, one thing was crystal clear. The law was an ugly, jealous mistress.
I watched for a few moments longer, then made my way back to my office to prepare for the next hearing.
*
The day became known as 9-11. Songs have been written about it, television shows and movies have been made. Whoopie Goldberg made sentimental references to the day in the next Oscar telecast. Commentator after commentator referenced up the same analogy: that the landscape of our nation had changed—in New York City, literally, and figuratively for the rest of us.
My life changed after 9-11. These changes and the events of 9-11 are unrelated in any respect except for time, but even five years later, when I think about 9-11, I think about how I was sitting in an office preparing for an irrelevant bankruptcy hearing and how I almost missed the single, most important event of the decade. This idea haunts me. Within a year, I accepted the fact that I hated my job as an attorney and hated the way it consumed my life, and within two years I had changed careers. For much of the rest of the world, 9-11 came to symbolize a single moment of horror and terror that changed their lives. For me, 9-11 is a reminder of how much I lost while working as an attorney, and how many of the hours and how much of the effort was simply futile. 9-11 made me realize there wasn’t enough money in the world to pay for a job that I hated, and that demanded I sacrifice everything I loved to satisfy its insatiable appetite.
The commentators were right. The landscape had indeed changed.