The tragedy of September 11, 2001 can still be felt by those who see the images replayed in our brains. The fact that the news outlets were experiencing these images with us allowed us all to be there real-time. We all gave a collective gasp as everything continued to unfold in such a horrific way.
All these years later, the movies still play in my brain and I ask God to touch the families who were affected. The accompanying emotions are no longer physically felt, but I remember I had them. The distance of time has also allowed me to pick up on things I couldn't when we all were so overwhelmed with the life and death we were living out.
One of the things that now strikes me is the paper. If you watch footage of the Towers after the attack and before the collapse there is a lot of debris everywhere, both airborne and lying around. If we eliminate the construction debris, there is an immense amount of 8-1/2" by 11" pieces of paper again, wafting down and littering the ground.
I worked in a home healthcare office before I came home to be with my kids. Trust me, I moved a LOT of paper around! There were papers to fax, papers to file, papers to send, papers to store, papers to haul, papers to pile and papers to shred. My cubicle had a whole long side counter of piles of papers that were in some stage of being processed. Each one of them seemed so important, especially when it dealt with someone's potential health being compromised.
September 11 put that into perspective for me. There were a lot of people who walked into their office that day ready to tackle their own piles of paper. Those piles seemed so important up through 8:45 AM that day. And suddenly, the proper perspective came out about those millions of pieces of paper in the Tower. Most days, it was important. But when it all came down to it, it wasn't worth a mention when the world is literally crumbling down around you. And in the aftermath, only the contents of very, very, very few of those papers were even remembered.
In nutrition, it's easy to begin to weight everything equally. Watch the sat fat! Don't eat too much! Don't eat too little! Get protein within 20 minutes after your workout! Don't eat too much Vitamin A! I know to some I'm about to speak blasphemy here, but for Pete's sake--STOP! IT JUST ISN'T THAT IMPORTANT! Instead of thinking about excellence in nutrition today, use that energy to hug your kid. Tell someone how much you love them. Give a sincere compliment to a grouchy person. Take a walk and make yourself go slow. Go for a bike ride. And absolutely, positively, eat something you love to eat. When the bully in your head begins to calculate the calories and fat and sugar, tell him to go the heck away. Tell him it's September 11th, and that you are choosing to care about your life being changed instead of the paperwork.