My first six months, living in Los Angeles, were one of the two toughest periods in my life. Giving some background, I moved to Los Angeles after receiving a job offer as an editor for a magazine. It was an ambitious hire and I was an ambitious fella. It all fell apart, pretty immediate. My first day in LA, the magazine filed for Chapter 11 and I was out of a job. The house I was going to house sit, didn’t need a house sitter anymore. I needed a place to live. I was going through a difficult break-up and with no job, no housing, I was lost. I looked and looked for jobs. Finally, I found one. An editor at a Travel Guide.

It’s now the nineteenth year of me living in Los Angeles and I’ll never forget my first day at my first job in LA. It was September 11, 2001. The enormity of it all seemed too enormous at the moment because the total enormity hadn’t set in. One second I’m driving to my first day and the next, planes are falling from the sky and we’re under attack. I had lived in New York City five years prior and to see the devastation was crushing and to understand what it meant for that city and this country, wouldn’t settle for some time. The sheer panic of the initial thought and the visual moment has stuck with me as I’m sure it has stuck with all of you.

I have close friends who lost many people that day. I personally knew three who perished and I perhaps don’t think on them enough. It’s hard to focus on such a heinous act. Sometimes it’s easier to push aside the moment, the agony, the suffering and the sadness and I have. But, every year on this day, I think of Eric, Gene and Adam and wonder what their lives might have been. And it brings me back to that day. And I do remember.

I am lucky to have a tremendous swath of friends. They don’t all look like me and they certainly don’t think like I do. I was raised to be appreciative of other thoughts and to me, expression of ideas and ideals, different and otherwise, is the American way. Every year, on this day, I think on what it means to be an American; what it means to me. I like to think we’re building a great society and a better country. I prefer to look at our differences as an opportunity for improvement and growth. To me, that’s America. For every friend who thinks like I do, I have four other friends who disagree; it doesn’t mean I care for them any less.

It’s always coldest right before the dawn and yes, that’s what it might feel like right now but I do believe the dawn is ahead. It may be hard to find optimism in these days but hope is alive and we can embrace it. From the darkness of 9/11, I’ve seen growth. From the dark days of 2020, we will find a new way and a new world.