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Sep. 11th, 2007 09:32 amIt's that day again.
I'm glad that it's rainy and miserable outside, because it makes it NOT like six years ago when the sky couldn't have been more perfect. I can picture sitting on the lawn outside my building staring up at the beautiful blue and the few clouds, trying to comprehend the enormity of what was happening, absorbing how strangely silent the sky had become. Beautiful september days leave me uneasy now.
In some ways, though, it's the day before that day that I remember most starkly.
I was working at a tech startup. We'd brought a pair of consultants on board for a particular project (Project Pull Our Idiot CIO's Ass Out Of The Fire For His Earlier Stupid Decisions). I did not have much interaction with one of the men, but the lead consultant, who went by the much shortened name Vamsi, worked fairly closely with me and the other IT people for over a month. On Monday the 10th we were almost, but not quite, done.
I was sitting in Vamsi's cubicle late that afternoon. It had been a bad day; a quarter of the company, including close friends, had been laid off that morning, the cuts more obviously based on personal politics than competence or contribution. I just wanted to go home and not be in that place any more. We could finish up the last of the work the next day, and he was booked on an afternoon flight home. Simple.
And then Vamsi's wife called.
When the consultants had first come to work for us, Vamsi had a bandage on his forehead and some good cuts and scrapes. Over the course of working together, he told us how he'd been in a car accident a few weeks earlier and how it had really scared him, and how this was going to be his last big traveling job and once it was over he was going to stay closer to home so he could spend more time with his wife and they could start a family. Even only overhearing one side of the phone conversation, it was so totally apparent that they were absolutely head over heels in love with each other and missed each other terribly. When he got off the phone he made a sheepish face, actually blushing. "That was the wifey," he said. I felt so bad for them for having been kept apart for a month doing this stupid project for our a**hole CIO.
So I stayed and finished up the last of the project with him that night so that he could go home first thing in the morning. He changed his flight for the earlier one, Flight 11, and never made it home at all.
His wife committed suicide two weeks later. I believe she hung herself.
We think of our actions (well, hopefully we think of our actions) in terms of the direct consequences. That something so small done out of kindness could be one link in a chain of events and decisions to lead to such tragedy is inconceivable. It's like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon -- usually we cannot see, cannot imagine, the path the future takes after each thing we do. It may be that our intents and motivations are ultimately meaningless. Which perhaps makes it all the more important that we do what we do out of kindness and generosity as much as we are able. We can't know the future will be better, but we can at least know we are.
I'm glad that it's rainy and miserable outside, because it makes it NOT like six years ago when the sky couldn't have been more perfect. I can picture sitting on the lawn outside my building staring up at the beautiful blue and the few clouds, trying to comprehend the enormity of what was happening, absorbing how strangely silent the sky had become. Beautiful september days leave me uneasy now.
In some ways, though, it's the day before that day that I remember most starkly.
I was working at a tech startup. We'd brought a pair of consultants on board for a particular project (Project Pull Our Idiot CIO's Ass Out Of The Fire For His Earlier Stupid Decisions). I did not have much interaction with one of the men, but the lead consultant, who went by the much shortened name Vamsi, worked fairly closely with me and the other IT people for over a month. On Monday the 10th we were almost, but not quite, done.
I was sitting in Vamsi's cubicle late that afternoon. It had been a bad day; a quarter of the company, including close friends, had been laid off that morning, the cuts more obviously based on personal politics than competence or contribution. I just wanted to go home and not be in that place any more. We could finish up the last of the work the next day, and he was booked on an afternoon flight home. Simple.
And then Vamsi's wife called.
When the consultants had first come to work for us, Vamsi had a bandage on his forehead and some good cuts and scrapes. Over the course of working together, he told us how he'd been in a car accident a few weeks earlier and how it had really scared him, and how this was going to be his last big traveling job and once it was over he was going to stay closer to home so he could spend more time with his wife and they could start a family. Even only overhearing one side of the phone conversation, it was so totally apparent that they were absolutely head over heels in love with each other and missed each other terribly. When he got off the phone he made a sheepish face, actually blushing. "That was the wifey," he said. I felt so bad for them for having been kept apart for a month doing this stupid project for our a**hole CIO.
So I stayed and finished up the last of the project with him that night so that he could go home first thing in the morning. He changed his flight for the earlier one, Flight 11, and never made it home at all.
His wife committed suicide two weeks later. I believe she hung herself.
We think of our actions (well, hopefully we think of our actions) in terms of the direct consequences. That something so small done out of kindness could be one link in a chain of events and decisions to lead to such tragedy is inconceivable. It's like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon -- usually we cannot see, cannot imagine, the path the future takes after each thing we do. It may be that our intents and motivations are ultimately meaningless. Which perhaps makes it all the more important that we do what we do out of kindness and generosity as much as we are able. We can't know the future will be better, but we can at least know we are.
