I am a story teller and I know the power and meaning of stories.  There is a significant story in my life – my 911 story – and several conversations and a dinner brought it into focus.

For the past few weeks, many of the people I have been with have told their 911 stories. Where they were, how they felt, what they did, which images burned in their consciousness, how it changed and affected them.  How they wept when they saw the jumpers again, the burning towers, the buildings collapse. 911 is an important thing, and it’s perfectly understandable for people to want to recall it.

Yet something about these stories bothered me, made me feel uncomfortable. Why, I wondered, do we do this? Why do we need to return to these images, again and again and again and recall our feelings and memories of it. It must be important or necessary, because so many people do it, but when I was at a friend’s house the other night, everyone at the table was sharing their 911 stories, and when they were done, they all looked at me to hear mine.

I do have a 911 story and I have told it many times.

But not this time. Not any more. I don’t need to tell it any longer, I thought. I was not in the Towers,and I did not lose any members of my family. I will not forget it, and I don’t need politicians, ceremonies, or searing images to remind me of it. I cannot image how this could be healthy or necessary – for so many people to cling to these images and stories, to tap into this well of anger and grief. It seemed inappropriate to me, as if telling my 911 story was tantamount to robbing someone else’s grief and trauma. As if, by having a story, I was part of the suffering.

I might have welcomed some real public discussions about the damage 911 has done to our civic life and culture, and does still. Or whether we can ever dismantle this vast security apparatus, laws and regulations created and  constructed its wake, from taking off our shoes to the cruelty, even madness, of immigration and visa laws- even driver’s licenses and name changes. But nobody will ever want to have that discussion when they can gorge themselves on horrific imagery, year after year. People seem to need this kind of drama, and want a piece of the grief. It is everywhere.

So the important thing about my 911 story is that it is a story I did not tell, do not need to tell, that no one needs to hear, and that I will not tell again. Sometimes, I am learning, the most important stories are the ones I don’t tell.