All of us are proud of the rescue workers, of their bravery, their generosity, their kindness, their strength.  We are proud of firefighters and steel workers, dog handlers and doctors, nurses and cab drivers, people who are proving that humanity wins out over brutality.  We all want to help, but many of us feel helpless.  We are not.  Here is what each of us can do: 

We have become aware that an enormous number of people have died.  Out of respect for them and in honor of them, please take a moment each day for as many days as you can to appreciate the gift of life you now hold.  Know that it is a gift and that thousands of people didn't know they would die on Sept. 11.  Make a plan for the future.  Do something you might put off.  Enjoy the sunshine.  Put aside petty complaints.  Let yourself cry.  Acknowledge your gratitude that you are here, you are safe, you are alive.  Take a deep breath and say, for all those who cannot, that you are glad to be here and whole, that you are glad to be alive.

Out of respect and in honor of the many people who are grieving, who have lost loved ones, take a moment to let someone know that you love them.  Sometimes we don't say what is most heartfelt.  Those who have lost family and friends can never again say to them what they felt.  Don't, for sillier reasons, lose your chance to tell another how much they matter.

Out of respect and in honor of those who were decent and kind and generous, even when a building was burning around them, treat strangers with that same generosity and patience.  If panicked and injured people were able to act together as a group, in evacuating the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in bringing down a plane in Pennsylvania, then surely those of us distant from these tragedies can be courteous in line at the supermarket or allow someone to merge in our lane on the freeway.  Surely we can demonstrate that there is a "we" more significant than the differences between you and I.

Out of respect and in honor of the rescue workers who are exhausted and demoralized or who died trying to save a stranger, please offer your help to someone who is yet a stranger to you.  It may be someone who has a flat tire, someone who is lost or has run out of gas, someone who cannot lift something heavy, someone who needs a third hand.  It doesn't have to be "important."  Just reach out your hand to someone in need, someone you don’t know.

We would all like to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave, in a nation united in honor, in a country united with the world.  A country is only the sum of its individual citizens.  Live these values in your own life and you will be what you want your country, and your world, to be.  You will be honoring the brave, the grieving, the injured and the dead.  We are all victims and survivors, heroes and helpers.  Live with the consciousness of that on a daily basis and perhaps the changes our nation has undergone will not all be for the worse.  We are not helpless and we have reason to be proud.