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The Sum of LightCynthia's Column November 2001 This publication goes to press on the first of each month for the next month's issue. Which makes this the first chance we have had here to respond in print to the horrific events of this past month. I was at the airport here in Portland when the World Trade Center was hit. I stood with a hundred strangers watching the big screen television in the C concourse as the second plane hit. It is hard to judge the passage of time, as we were all in some kind of shock, but a voice came over the loudspeakers instructing everyone in the airport to go to Baggage Claim and retrieve their bags. The airport was closing. Like most of you, I felt CNN was my lifeline for the next few days. It wasn't that we wanted to see the horror over and over again. It was that we were afraid some new event would explode and we needed to know. In 1996 when we had the flood here, I stood on the back patio watching the white water rapids tearing through the canal, slowly rising closer to my house. I was afraid to turn my back on it. Afraid to stop watching the water rise. As if my watching it would hold it back. Avert disaster. I felt this way about CNN. That somehow by my watching, my vigilance, further horror might be averted. As if this had happened to us because we weren't paying enough attention. So terrorists could learn to fly commercial airline planes and buy tickets and plan mass murder on an apocalyptic scale and we would see nothing amiss until their suicide missions were played out. And so we became witnesses of the nightmare and the mourning. We attended the search, we sent our blood and our prayers. We were there for the benefit telethon which filled the airwaves in a way nothing in history has ever done before. Nearly every channel, in every country. In 1969 the whole world for the first time all watched a singular event simultaneously as the first man walked on the moon. And for the first time millions of people on earth were emotionally aligned in celebration. This was a win for all of mankind. Not just Americans. The fireworks that went up around the world on the New Years Eve of the new millennium were also witnessed by the whole world as midnight sped from city to city, continent to continent, from Australia westward around the globe. And we watched again, united by shock and by grief, millions of us gathered together in Yankee Stadium for the memorial service. We cried together as Bette Midler sang "Did you ever know you were my hero? " In my class I teach about the evolution of character. I wrote a Column about it a few years ago in this space. That a character moves from Level One, completely self involved, to Level Two, bonding with one other. Level Three is the level of family. Clan mentality. Level Four is Community. And finally Level Five, Humanity. Caring about all people on earth. Valuing them equally. Part of what happened last month in America is that millions of people who had been walking around at Levels One, Two and Three, taking care of themselves, their loved ones, their family, were suddenly catapulted out of their complacency into Level Four awareness. We all became citizens of a community first and foremost. Something that may not have happened to us as a country since Pearl Harbor, which this event has been often compared to. This is a miraculous byproduct of this unimaginable tragedy. The way our nation has risen to join hands and lend our love, support, strength, and hope is a powerful expression of who we are at the deepest level. And it is important that we not lose sight of the truth, that there is a level beyond this one. A higher level still, one to be aware of and to strive for. The level of humanity. In my own search for meaning in sorting out these events I have turned to reading and to remembering things I have learned over the years. These gave me comfort, made me think in new ways about what we are going through. Marcus Aurelius nearly 2000 years ago, pondered similar issues. His thinking on cataclysmic events was that they will always be us, whether caused by our enemies, or natural disasters. But the true test, and the only way to really measure catastrophe, was by whether it made us better people, or worse. It seems clear that the terrorist attacks on September 11, have made us better people. In the film Gandhi, a troubled man comes to the great teacher and says that he has killed his hated Muslim enemy. What now must he do? And the master looks at him with compassion and tells him to go to the house of his enemy, take his orphaned son, bring him home and raise him. And raise him as a Muslim. In Peter Weir's film The Year of Living Dangerously, the marvelous character of Billy Kwan, (created by Linda Hunt, and for which she won the Oscar,) talks about whether it is better to battle the darkness or to simply add one's light to the sum of light. He chooses the latter. Adding his light to the sum of light. It helps me to remember that in a battle against darkness, whether it is physical, emotional or spiritual, a room can be plunged into the darkest night, then in an instant that darkness can be dispelled by the light of a single candle. Our culture is rich with candle references and images. From This Little Light of Mine sung in childhood, to our sea of matches held high in rock concerts, to people all over America stepping out onto their front porches holding candles as a symbol that here, the flame still burns. And brightly. My favorite quote in literature is from George Bernard Shaw."This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |