Leading by fear

I remember shortly after the towers went down, I was walking down the streets of Manhattan with that eerie cloud that hung over the city from 9/12 to probably 9/15 or so. Loud sirens going off now and again, the smell of burnt plastic, and that presence of absence of the hustle and bustle of rushing cars and people that is quitessential NYC.

I was still recovering from the day before, when I had to walk upstream through the crowds of frantic professionals trying to hightail it as far away from downtown as possible. The fear I felt was almost palpable. My body still sort of shaky and my mind wandered like crazy. I couldn't really think straight. The fear was mostly of "what's next?" Both in the very literal sense - what was next when I turned the corner? Another downed building? Car bomb? And also the bigger question, what's next for our country and the world as we knew it?

There was also that very creepy fear of knowing who was at the helm of this ship. A newly elected, former frat boy that somehow got away with the presidency. At the time, he wasn't as well-disliked as he is today, but we were definitely questioning #1 where was he? and #2 can he actually do this? He was the guy that would now be responsible for pulling together the nation and the world. Forging alliances. Making decisions on foreign policy. Helping us make sense of this all and setting a clear execution plan and vision for us to move forward. Ok. Deep breath.

Can't believe it's been 7 years since that horribly tragic day. It feels particularly strange this year given we will soon have a change in leadership for the first time since 2001. Will there be more fearful days to come and how will we handle them differently?

Looking back, I can see that first type of fear really got the best of us. That fear of being attacked at any moment and not being able to think clearly for ourselves. Even more, the fear of people that looked different from us. Basically this fear of the unknown that is so unfamiliar to us as Americans. We shouldn't have to ever feel that kind of fear. But we certainly felt it. And that really set us up on this course that we have let our leadership take us on and that we are still on today. Granted, we did have a very motivating set of cowboy speeches that made us feel like we were all holding torches in our hands ready to hunt the bad guy - any bad guy.

Will 9/11/09 be a better day than 9/11/08? Will we let fear get the best of us again or will we try to get ahead of the fear instead?