Project Rebirth by Dr. Robin Stern Page A

off the idea of receiving anything in return for his help, he says, “We should pay them for the feeling they give us. It’s a good feeling, helping people.”

    Another New York City summer is ending, and the air this September morning at the park is a bit cooler and drier, making Charles cough repeatedly. He clears his throat and adjusts his Hogwarts baseball cap over his short-cropped, graying afro. He is glad that at least the piercing “sticky-glass” feeling in his lungs isn’t there anymore. He reflects, “Lord must have blessed me, ’cause I should be in a box by now. I see so many people sicker than me that spent less time down there.”
    â€œDown there” means Ground Zero, where he arrived on September 11, 2001, and stayed for the first 117 days, pouring his soul into the rescue and recovery efforts. C.C., a name familiar to subway riders during his last days as a conductor on the local C line (“C.C. on the C.C.!” he exclaims), was one of New York City’s angels on that day.
    With the tenth anniversary almost upon Charles, the words of the Mount Sinai doctors who examined hundreds of first responders like him have made the reality of his failing health feel more imminent. Some of the reports he has read state that inhaling the dust at Ground Zero during the first few weeks after the attacks may have cut his life expectancy by fifteen to twenty years. Charles might not feel old, but he accepts that his time will be up soon. “You come, you go,” he nonchalantly tells friends and family.
    His casual attitude toward his own death is perhaps possible only because he feels secure that his legacy, the legacy of his grandmother, has been continued in every teddy bear he’s pressed into the hands of a forlorn child, every bottle of water he’s delivered to an ash-covered emergency worker, and every brick he’s cleared from a disaster zone. Charles is a man whose grief is assuaged by giving, whose loss is honored by dedicated service to others.
    His service is remarkable and yet not out of the ordinary. Lao Tzu, the celebrated Chinese philosopher and author of the Tao Te Ching, teaches that there are four cardinal virtues: reverence for all life, natural sincerity, gentleness, and supportiveness. The last of these, it turns out, is the virtue that releases us from our own pain by allowing us to focus on healing the pain of others.
    When grieving a loss in our own lives, sometimes the most powerful action we can take is to forget ourselves for a moment and turn to others—connecting us to all of humanity. Charles has continuously done this, threading the loss of his beloved grandmother to the losses endured by his beloved hometown and his beloved nation. In the process, he has destroyed his body, but his heart is happy. He knows, as Lao Tzu also wrote, that “life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.” Charles ties his fate to the fate of his neighbors, his fellow New Yorkers, his fellow citizens, and so, in a sense, lives forever, just like his Tana.

The Unlikely Activist
    Larry Courtney
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    L arry Courtney excuses himself from his own New Year’s Eve party for a moment. He steps onto his large terrace and looks down at tens of thousands of revelers in Times Square, drunkenly swaying arm in arm, blowing kazoos, and squeezing past one another in an effort to get closer to the infamous ball. It will drop shortly. Larry wishes he felt even a fraction of the giddiness of these revelers. He envies their drunken kisses, their sentimental send-off to 2001, the year that’s just passed. For him, it can’t end soon enough. Though he is fifty-six, he feels one hundred years old.
    He takes a deep breath of the cold winter air and exhales, imagining a little bit of grief leaving his body. The lights shine ferociously. He misses his love.

    â€œI’m in love with you, Gene.” The words