Okay, despite the lifelong rivals of my favorite baseball team- think crimson red socks- as a dweller of Boston, I admit without shame that I LOVE New York- New York City that is - from top to bottom of the island that is called Manhattan, I LOVE it all.

For me, it’s the vibe and the mix- of people, ideas, fashions- New York is a place where you can be yourself knowing that most people you see won’t really care about your individualized look or thoughts because they have their own. It’s a place to speak out and dress as you will without fear- of judgment, of retaliation- because, for the most part, with so much diversity, New Yorkers are pretty tolerant of differences. That is, after all, what enables the true melting of cultures and melding of worlds of thoughts that is the nature of melting pots, that is the nature of New York City.

And while it might seem odd, I LOVE spending September 11ths in New York City. For me, it’s a way to express my commitment to freedom or perhaps a holdover from the days of rebellion when we staged sit-ins and other political rabble rousing during those wild early 70s.

Whatever the reason, I relish finding a way to work in New York on September 11 so that I can awaken in midtown Manhattan on September 11 and take myself out for an early morning run in THE Park- as in Central Park- to celebrate life.

And that is just what I did yesterday. I celebrated life and remembered the people who started their September 11 of 2001 running the same route as I in Central Park- and it was awe-inspiring- and very wet between the rain that was unleashed from the sky and my own tears- in fact so wet that Jackson Brown’s deluge song rewound again and again in my mind. And I celebrated life and lives of others.

My usual route starts out at the south end of the park- THE Park- where the roads are closed to cars to accommodate early morning runners and cyclists. Yesterday, with the weather forecast of downpours and morning thunderstorms, running traffic was light as I embarked on my pre-sunrise trek around the 6-mile route that circles the perimeter of THE Park.

Immersed in fog and darkness as well as my own thoughts, I headed north up the East side where more runners jumped in for their own daily running adventures. I noticed- or at least I read into things- that people seemed more somber this morning. While there is usually a dull roar of chatter between pairs and groups of runners, today was more silent, more meditative.

Perhaps other runners, mostly people who live full-time on this island, were also remembering those who had run here- just six years prior- as the routine start to their routine days. Perhaps too, they were thinking, as I was, about what it was like for those who ran that morning and then headed out to their workplaces at the southern tip of this island- those who worked in and around the World Trade Center towers.

My thoughts were with those people who had started their Tuesday of September 11, 2001 here on these roadways. I ran in their honor. I started to cry huge tears that were indistinguishable from the raindrops that had started to run down my face as a light wash began to drizzle from the skies above at about one-quarter of the way through this morning trek.

I could turn around and go back to my hotel’s gym where it was brightly lit and dry, I told myself. But not today- I wanted to experience the run that others had experienced on a morning that, unbeknownst to them as they ran, would be their last run, their last morning.

I thought about how we- how I- assume each day that we will return from our runs, from our workdays, to engage in our evening routines with our family members or those who are part of the routines that become our lives. I laughed, through my tears, at what a funny, really absurd, assumption that truly is and that, still, it is one that enables us to spring form our beds in the morning to run on streets, to drive on roads, to insert ourselves in metal containers known as commuter rails- all with the assumption that we will prevail over any life-threatening challenge we might face- or perhaps more accurately- all with the assumption that we won’t encounter any life-threatening challenges on this day- or ever. And that’s how it is that we enable ourselves to feel safe enough to pursue our life goals- it’s those assumptions that we are immortal or that surely we will have a notice to alert us about when it might be our last day so we can say our goodbyes and be the true and nice person we intended to be, that authentic self that got covered up by the stressed-out version responding to today’s demands of living in a global world at a global pace.

I remembered an episode of Gray’s Anatomy- where a patient must give up cigarettes if a transplanted finger will stay in place and where he tries to steal a smoke, conscious that he never knew that his last cigarette was his last cigarette, wanting to realize this and to relish his last cigarette. And I wondered too- what if we knew that our last goodbye would be our last goodbye, that our last kiss would be our last kiss?

What if we lived each moment- truly- as if this breath might be our last chance to savor oxygen? What if we chose the contents of our minds because we knew that this thought might be our last? What if we seized this opportunity to look into the eyes of another, be it a loved one, a beloved pet, or a stranger on the street as a way to engage because these might be the last eyes we see? What would we do differently? What would I do differently?

And I wondered what those people who ran and walked and cycled and rollerbladed on these same roadways, in this same park, might have done differently if they had had a notice that this might have been their last run, that this might have been their last goodbye to loved ones? And the tears that fell from my heart and emerged from my eyes rivaled the deluge of rain that had begun to pour from the skies as I rounded the northern end of my journey on the roadways that took me past the neighborhood that is called Harlem..

With the rain falling so fast and furious, my feet were soaked and water was streaming down from my shoulders. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was alive. I could feel every breath and every footstep as my mind instructed my feet to keep going and my glorious heart continued to pump to enable me to go where my mind wanted me to move.. I marveled at the miracle that is life, the miracle that is the human spirit and the power of will that enables us to determine that we will run a 6 mile loop or do whatever it is that we wake up intending to do on any particular morning.

I marveled at the unconscious way that we live- or choose to live- turning choices into habit and then relinquishing our power to change those habits or to take accountability for them and for the sequence of habits and choices that become our lives.

And I wondered again, how was it for those people who had run in this park on their last morning? What choices might they have made that would have been different had they known that these would be their last few hours on this earth-bound journey?

I could not see far at this point, the tears were beyond streaming- they too had reached deluge strength as had the rain. And it seemed so fitting- that the skies were crying with me, crying for the loss of people, for the loss of a dream that we are safe in our worlds that we create as life, safe in this world where perceived differences in ways of thinking can lead people to terrorize others.

There were more people in the park now- striding, sprinting, jogging and walking - as I moved myself from North to South along the upper West Side of the park roadways. And still, it was so quiet, so appropriately somber, with the skies darkened by the clouds producing buckets of tears.

My heart began to hurt and my feet slowed to relish and savor each footstep on this morning run, to savor each breath and heartbeat that I would feel that day- and this day.

There was something different about being in New York City on yesterday’s commemorative day of September 11. I felt it in my morning run. I felt it as I walked from my hotel to my client’s site in glorious midtown Manhattan. People had moved beyond fearing another attack- instead people were savoring life and each other. The eye contact on the street as I walked to my client’s place of business- it was different. People engaged from their hearts, people stepped with purpose in a way that seemed qualitatively different from the day before when each footstep I saw and heard seemed to be completed with impatience, with a purpose to just get ‘there’ rather than to relish the here of where people were. I felt the difference myself- in my own footsteps and in eye contact with others. Yesterday it was soul-full rather than simply purposeful- to warn others to get out of the line that you had chosen on this sidewalk of life.

I wished each day could be like this- one of authentic connection, one of purposeful choice about how we engage with others and about the activities with which we engage.

This morning I awakened in my own bed, back in the neck of the woods where baseball players don red socks instead of white and blue pinstripes.
And I decided to live each moment of this day, too, as if it might be my last.

I savored each sip of my morning coffee.
As you would imagine, my sixteen year old daughter got quite the goodbye.
I relished each stop on my Stairmaster, heart builder that it is.
My clients are hearing the truth with care and concern for their welfare as I ask them to make conscious the choices they are making on autopilot so they can determine- is this how I truly want to live and interact with others at work, at home, on the roadways of life?

With each choice, I am asking myself- Is this truly how I want to spend my most limited resource- my life’s time?

How about you? Are you making the choices you would make if this was destined to be your last morning or afternoon or evening? If not, what could you change and still pay tuition and mortgages and maintain the daily functions that are life? How would you greet or say goodbye to a loved one, to another human being, if this was your- or their- last hour?

Yesterday marked 6 years’ distance from the fateful 911 date that changed our outlooks and lives forever. A resident of the Boston area, I was fortunate enough to be midtown New York for this 911. It was another day that changed my life. Thank you, New York New York and thank you to the skies that let loose buckets of tears along with me!