Three days after September 11, 2001, I sat down and wrote a poem in Chinese.
Reading it after all these years brought tears to my eyes.
The poem was called The Eternal Candle – 《永恒的蜡烛》. I wrote it on September 14, when smoke was still rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center and much of America was still trying to understand what had happened.
I was living in Cambridge at the time. I worked in the tech industry as a trainer, a job that required me to travel frequently around the country. My wife called me CFO – Chief Flying Object.
That morning, I was home, but I could easily have been somewhere else. I could have been on one of those early morning flights heading west. Or I could have been in Manhattan.
During my travels, I had stayed at the Marriott World Trade Center, the hotel located next to the Twin Towers. On September 11, the hotel was caught in the destruction and severely damaged.
One of my coworkers was actually staying there that morning. Knowing that someone I worked with was inside that hotel has always made September 11 feel particularly close to me.
I was sitting at home, watching television as the events unfolded.
At first, like everyone else, I was trying to understand what I was seeing. Then the second plane struck the South Tower.
At that moment, my thought was simple and frightening:
This is an act of war on American soil.
I watched for hours as the images repeatedly flashed – the smoke, the towers, the people running, the firefighters and police officers rushing toward danger, while everyone else was trying to get away.
A friend called me from Ohio that day, simply to make sure that I hadn’t traveled.
That small phone call has stayed with me.
Three days later, I tried to put my feelings into words.
I wrote about the candles appearing across the country. I wrote about the rain and tears that seemed impossible to distinguish. I wrote about firefighters lifting their exhausted eyes toward the people searching for their loved ones.
And I asked a question that seemed almost too simple:
What is the most precious thing in life?
The poem imagined people lighting candles among the ruins, saying goodbye to those who had died and praying for their souls. I wrote that the candles should be lit regardless of people’s skin color or race – that we should stand together and walk toward a new dawn.
I was an immigrant from China who had made America my home. Perhaps that is why the idea of people from different backgrounds coming together resonated so deeply with me.
September 11 was an American tragedy, but it was also an international one.
The people who died came from many countries and many walks of life. The people who responded came from different races, religions and nationalities.
For a brief moment, the differences between us seemed much less important than the simple fact that we were humans.
Twenty-five years later, that thought feels worth remembering.
When we look at the list of the 2,977 people killed in the September 11 attacks, we see names.
We don’t see political labels beside them. We don’t see Democrat or Republican. We don’t see conservative or liberal.
We see people – mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, coworkers and friends, firefighters and police officers, office workers and travelers, people from different races, religions and countries.
First and foremost, they were civilians.
They were human beings.
Perhaps that is something worth carrying with us today.
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We don’t know which neighbor may someday need our help, or which person we pass on the street may be carrying a burden we cannot see.
So perhaps we should smile at our neighbors a little more often. Say hello. Reach across whatever political or other differences divide us.
Not because we have to agree with one another.
But because, in the end, we are all sharing the same fragile thing:
Life
I ended The Eternal Candle with the image of a candle.
The final lines, translated into English, read:
What is the most precious thing in life?
I asked
Life itself
the candle answered
Reading those words again 25 years later affected me more than I expected.
Perhaps because I now have 25 more years of life behind me.
Perhaps because I have watched my children grow up.
Perhaps because so much has changed in America and in the world since that September morning.
Or perhaps because, after a quarter century, the question in the poem still has the same answer.
Life.
Twenty-five years later, September 11 has become history to a younger generation. For those of us who lived through it, however, it was not history that morning.
And now, finding a poem I wrote just three days afterward reminds me of something else: before September 11 became a date in history books, it was a moment of profound human loss – and also a moment when people reached for one another.
So, 25 years later, I light that candle again in my mind. Not only to remember those who were lost, but to remember what we learned in those first difficult days:
That life is fragile.
That none of us knows what tomorrow will bring.
And that when darkness comes, sometimes the most important thing we can do is light a small candle and walk together toward the dawn.
“What is the most precious thing in life?”
Life itself
The candle answered
