September 11, 2012: Honoring Peace

A Chapter by Marie Anzalone

I am going to talk to a Nobel Peace Prize winner today. Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan human rights activist, is coming to speak at my University. I had met her before, in Guatemala, and also have worked with a close friend of hers. But today I am hoping to actually have a conversation that will lead to collaboration. Whatever else I am screwing up in life, I am definitely setting myself up to be around the right kinds of people for cultivating a sense of awe, gratitude, and purpose.

It is bitterly ironic, especially for me, that the day is the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Eleven years ago, I was on my way into NYC with my completed Peace Corps application. The PC headquarters was in the World Trade Center Complex (one of the other buildings destroyed). My plan was to drop off my application at 8:00 am, and then take the elevator as early as possible to the top of the towers to see the skyline. Obviously, "something" told me not to go. I decided to postpone my trip until Wednesday, due to a series of premonitions so strong they left me shaking and sobbing for hours.

My later decision to go ahead with my Peace Corps application was not an easy one to make. I was engaged to be married, I was in the middle of my first professional career, I was living on my own in a beautiful place, and I was watching the US population being led down a path of increasing fear, retaliation, and hostility. That was the deciding factor for me... so many people shut their hearts and minds to the rest of the world that day, I decided I had to make a different kind of statement. One year later, I stood in a ceremony we held in Santa Lucia, Guatemala, in a circle with other trainees in country just over a week, remembering the attacks and honoring the vision we shared to still believe one person can help make the world a better place.

For better or worse, I opened my heart that day, to really and truly feel the pain of the world. The 11 years since have been a journey into international policies, community organization, drug violence, mental and emotional and spiritual collapse, devastating physical illness, tough choices, loneliness, more than my share of despair, self-doubt, disaster preparation, corn tortillas, dire predictions from family members, and the occasional moment of grace. Today's meetings will, I hope, be one of those moments of grace.

When I read Rigoberta's story, I am so reminded of how far most of us still have to come. She fought oppression, death squads, racism, brutality, and genocide- and she did most of it penniless, in exile, and often, barefoot and hungry.

It is hard for me to separate my Peace Corps experience from 9/11, as I can still smell Manhattan as it burned the day I was going to be at the WTC because of the PC. My decision to move forward was directly related to how I felt about the aftermath of 9/11, mismanaged badly enough by our leaders to make the aftermath a continuing wound in the psyches of people unaccustomed to the level of trauma that came alive on our screens.

The fear and uncertainty we all felt that day is what people who live in war zones around the world feel every day they send their loved ones out to work. It is a fear that apralyzes, and can bring out the absolute worst in people. It takes a very strong heart to stand against tyranny and hatred and oppression and say, "My vision is more powerful than the fear you would have me feel." When I talk to Rigoberta today, I will tell her, in her native tongue, "Mantiosh." Which is one of the Mayan words for thank you- their word, I have been told, for thanking someone for the Big Things in life. They differentiate between small daily kindnesses and courtesies, and big life changing ones. She is one of my heroes. I want to thank her for her own actions of courgae, by whose example I have learned to have the smallest sliver of my own, in her country, for her people. Mantiosh.

prev chapter