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I
sit here almost two weeks after the terrorist attack on the World Trade
Center thinking about my life. Like
everyone else, my emotions have run the gamut from anger to depression---and
it’s not over yet as our government prepares for the war on terrorism.
It will take at least six months to dig out the rubble from the
collapse of the World Trade Center---the anchor of the New York City
skyline. Each time I look down
Seventh Avenue, I want to cry. Of
course, I grieve for the people who died in the attack and for those who
lost friends and family, but I can’t believe I’m mourning a piece of
real estate. Why am I so
attached to this manmade symbol of power and might?
After all, I always thought the Twin Towers were down right ugly on
an aesthetic level. What
is going on with me?
The
World Trade Center might not have been beautiful, but whenever I saw the
towers from a distance, I felt comforted, protected and safe.
Each time I drove back from Pittsburgh, my hometown just 80 miles
from the crash site of the fourth hijacked plane, my heart leapt as soon
as the Trade Towers came into view. New
York is my adopted home, the city of my adulthood, and since I’ve lived
here longer than anywhere else, I now proudly consider myself a New
Yorker. I’m not a patriotic
person, but I’m intensely in love with the Big Apple, its energy and
inhabitants. I’ve come into
my own here. I’ve made my
own way here. I met my husband
here. I delivered my baby at
St. Vincent’s, the same hospital that desperately wanted to save lives
in the wake of the disaster. I
met Karen and became a Spiritual Chick here.
New York has embraced me, encouraged me, and as I’m beginning to
see more and more, reflected me. But
New York isn’t gone, only a part of downtown is crippled.
Even the Stock Exchange is back up and running.
I know they’ll rebuild. Why
do I feel so shaken up?
My
first job in New York was a few doors down from the Stock Exchange, just
off Wall Street. I worked as a
paralegal in Richard Nixon’s old law firm, which is kind of weird for a
kid raised on antiwar rallies and the Watergate hearings.
I told everyone that I was thinking of becoming a lawyer, but just
two days into the job I knew there was no way.
It’s not that law isn’t an admirable profession; it’s just
that I knew I’d be miserable. Down
deep I knew that eventually my creative and artistic leanings would get
the better of me. The
atmosphere in a Wall Street law firm is intense; corporate lawyers are not
the most relaxed people in the world.
But then, neither am I, which is probably why I flourished there.
I’m also adaptable. I’ve
had to be. Within a year, I
was promoted to supervisor. I
was very proud that I was the youngest and had the least seniority of
everyone on staff, yet I was their boss.
My ego was flying high—maybe as high as the Towers.
A
couple of years and a few promotions later, I left the law firm to begin a
new career in midtown, far away from the soaring monoliths of the
financial district. I became a
headhunter in the accounting and finance field.
I hated the job, and suffered through severe personal pain, but
made the decision not to give in to failure.
Having permanently set foot on the spiritual path, I rallied all my
strength and learned how to make one hundred cold calls a day and how to
make money. After a
year, I was fortunate enough to leave for a much better job on 59th
Street as the Regional Director for a prestigious paralegal school located
in Philadelphia. I
worked closely with the home office, but for the most part, I called my
own shots. I traveled, wrote
articles for trade magazines and newsletters and gave seminars.
I developed my own style of career counseling and built a strong
presence for the school in the New York area.
I started taking more risks in my personal life and began taking
voice lessons. Then, just as I
hit my stride, personally and professionally, the company began to
flounder and I decided to quit. I
spent a miserable few months in another job in the placement field, but
this time I couldn’t hang in there.
I made a leap of faith and stopped working to sing and to write a
book with a dear friend. It
nearly broke me. I cried every
day. I didn’t have any money
coming in and I had a hard time handling my intense feelings of
insecurity. And then the book
fell through. My singing, my
mother, and my friends sustained me. My
spiritual quest intensified. Then,
when all seemed lost, the Twin Towers beckoned me again.
I
returned to the law firm where I first started my career.
But the job wasn’t on the same level as the one I left six years
before. It was a giant blow to
my ego. Where was the towering
protection of the nearby World Trade Center?
I would have to re-earn that sense of security and
well-being. Before I left the
first time, the firm had relocated to a tall building that overlooked the
East River. As a non-lawyer,
however, I had an inner office with no view of the outside world.
Even from my insulated location, I felt the rumbling of the 1993
bombing of the World Trade Center, but I stayed at work that day after
many decided to leave the area, because my gut told me I was safe.
I was paying attention to my intuition by this time and trying to
bring my spiritual ideals in line with my day-to-day life, a goal I’m
still trying to achieve. After
this horrible event, something shifted inside me.
I began to understand that change is inevitable and that I didn’t
have to take life so personally. My
emotions weren’t the reliable lens on the world that I thought they
were. My view of the world was
not based on objective fact; it was simply the result of my nature and my
experience. I realized that if
I wanted to be happy, I would have to let go of everything, and see what
the world looked like then. As
I began to let go, new opportunities appeared.
Within a year, I had a new job in the firm as the communications
coordinator and an office with a window.
My view wasn’t of the World Trade Center, my office faced East,
toward Brooklyn, in the direction of the rising sun.
I
left this job after a year. I
had come to the end of the line. It
was time for me to sing, to write, to live outside the protection of the
past and out of the shadow of the World Trade Center, a gigantic symbol
for me of external authority and a way of life that didn’t really work
for me anymore. Ironically,
not long after I left, the law firm where I came of age and that had just
celebrated its 126th anniversary, collapsed under the weight of too many
egos. Six years later,
the Trade Center is gone too, a victim of the bloody global war of the
egos. I wonder what
they’ll build in its place, what I’ll build in its place.
Tami
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