What September 11th Taught Me About the Shelf Life of Unity

I was 19 on September 11th, 2001. Training in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center, months away from my first Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.

I remember the morning w/ a sharpness that hasn't faded in 24 yrs. A normal Tuesday that just stopped being normal. Someone turned on a television in the common area & within minutes every athlete in the building was standing there watching, not talking, not processing, just watching the same footage loop over & over while the world we thought we understood rearranged itself.

I didn't know what to do w/ that feeling. None of us did. We were 19, 20, 21 yrs old, training for something that suddenly felt very small against what was happening on those screens. The Olympic Games were five months away & nobody knew if they'd even happen.

What I remember most clearly isn't the fear or the confusion, though both were real. What I remember is what happened in the days after.

In the week following the attacks, something shifted in the country that I've never seen replicated at the same scale. People showed up for each other. Strangers helped strangers. Conversations w/ people you'd never normally talk to happened easily & naturally. The usual lines that divided people — politics, background, geography, whatever — they didn't disappear exactly, but they stopped mattering as much.

For a stretch of weeks, maybe months, we collectively decided that being human together was more important than being right separately.

I've thought about that period a lot over the yrs, especially during my book tour for Hard Pivot. I've sat across from people in bookstores & conference rooms & green rooms who still carry that day in their bodies, not their memories. They remember exactly where they were standing. Who called them. What song was on the radio that morning before everything changed.

These aren't intellectual memories — they're physical ones, stored in the chest & the throat & the hands.

And almost every one of those conversations eventually arrives at the same place: we were better to each other after. Not perfect, but better. More patient, more willing to listen, more aware that the person next to you is dealing w/ something you can't see.

Why did that version of ourselves fade?

The thing about that kind of unity is it has a shelf life unless you actively maintain it. Time does what time does — it softens edges, dulls urgency, lets the muscle memory of connection atrophy until you're back to your default settings. And our default settings, if we're being honest, tend toward isolation & assumption rather than curiosity & generosity.

I think about this talking to younger audiences. Gen Z didn't live through that morning. They don't have the body memory. For them, September 11th is history in the same way Pearl Harbor was history for my generation — important, acknowledged, but not visceral. And I don't blame them for that. You can't manufacture a feeling you never had.

But what concerns me is that the lessons attached to that feeling are fading w/ it. The understanding that division is a choice & so is unity. That arguing w/ strangers on the internet is easy & showing up for your neighbor is hard & they're not even close to the same thing.

Social media accelerated the erosion. We went from a country that stood in line to give blood to a country that fights in comment sections about things that won't matter in six months. And I'm not above it — I've caught myself getting pulled into the noise too. But catching yourself is the first step toward choosing differently.

My Olympic career taught me something I keep coming back to: the things that matter most are almost never the things that come naturally. Discipline is a daily choice, not a personality trait. So is patience, so is showing up when you'd rather not, & so is unity.

The unity we felt after September 11th wasn't born from perfection. America wasn't perfect before the attacks & we weren't perfect after. But we chose, briefly & powerfully, to prioritize shared humanity over individual grievances.

That choice is still available. It's available every morning, in every conversation, in every moment where you could assume the worst about someone & instead ask a question. It doesn't require a national tragedy to activate — it requires willingness to be a little more uncomfortable than your default setting.

Remembering isn't passive & it isn't nostalgic. It's a practice, same as anything else that matters.

It means choosing empathy when frustration feels easier. It means looking at someone you disagree w/ & still seeing a person whose story you don't fully know. It means noticing small ways we drift apart & closing that gap instead of widening it.

I don't have a formula for unity & I'm skeptical of anyone who claims they do. But I know what it felt like in those weeks after September 11th, & I know it wasn't forced or manufactured. It was instinctive — it was what showed up when everything else fell away.

We don't need to wait for catastrophe to access that version of ourselves. We just need to remember it exists.

Even if that starts w/ one honest conversation w/ someone you'd normally scroll past.

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--AAO