A Christmas Wish for my Country

At 34, I realize I may be a bit old for the whole Santa Claus rigmarole, but I’ll make one last go of it: this year, all I want for Christmas is my Twin Towers back, bigger if possible.

This is not just a wish for myself, but for my world-weary parents and for my nephew and nieces, the eldest of which is seven. It is for my fellow Americans and thoughtful citizens of that part of the world which holds free inquiry, scientific endeavor, and honest human effort in places of esteem as the true deliverers of improvement in the lives of the lot of us.

In a nation obsessed with the humdrum details of daily life, a fixation exacerbated by last year’s events of September 11th, the answer cannot be more “human scale” building. Too many of us are trapped in mediocre environments and for too many, if we are not drawn to look up beyond our own navels, probably never will.

Human cultures have always built monuments. Before this atrocity, the Twin Towers and their kind were monuments. More than that, they were living monuments. Most others are not. They are tombs for royals, reminders to subject peoples, or the province of bored students and gawking tourists. Living monuments touch the realm of daily life. Everyday people work there, form friendships there, find life partners there. Over half a dozen babies were born in the original World Trade Center. Living monuments, rather than being dedicated to some distant, sainted historical figure, are beacons to which ordinary people can and do aspire.

From all over the world people came, drawn to take their place among the living monuments and those who built them. That some have met a tragic end should not be taken as a lesson. An immigrant worker who died while working for a building-services firm in the Twin Towers could’ve just as easily met his fate as a victim of an unscrupulous human smuggler, suffocated in a cargo container or left desiccated along a desert border. Accidents in motor vehicles happen every day. Nobody would have remembered his name then, so tragedy does not deserve the place at the head of our table.

Over 30 years after our first successful lunar landing we are still experiencing trickle-down benefits from the technology developed for that effort. The original Twin Towers were part of a dramatic break from the skyscraper building techniques that reached their zenith in the 1930s. Nobody planned for this heinous attack. We must pick ourselves up and go forward despite our wounds.

I spent the first few days of December in Toronto, Canada at the Continental Automated Building Association’s first Intelligent and Integrated Buildings Conference. I met many people there who are not willing to concede defeat and who are still reaching for the sky.

The work that we are doing to make tenants safer and building operations more efficient is complex and far-reaching. We are sure of that work. All we need is a public that is open, supportive, unafraid to look deeper instead of jumping to the wrong conclusions and, most importantly, possessed of the willpower to do great things no matter what others may think, to keep a chain of human achievement unbroken for the next generation.

“Can’t” never brought us anything. “Modesty” never pushed us forward. Stagnant water turns foul. Dream no small dreams. After the conference, I went up the CN Tower, a beautiful, wonderful, though not “living” monument. It served to remind me of how important it is to have majesty in one’s environment, a marker of achievement to show us what is possible. I loved the view, and as the sun set, I felt a hopeful serenity. During the construction of the CN Tower, all the way to completion, Canadians were there to cheer the crews and show their support for their people. Their hearts knew what they were doing it for, and it was not just a fancy antenna. Please, America, reclaim this triumphant spirit before it becomes a stranger to your soul.

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