Generation 9/12 and the Summum Bonum

Over the summer, while promoting my book?In Valor: 365 Stoic Meditations for First Responders, I went on a podcast tour. On show after show, I was asked what got me into law enforcement, and my answer was always the same: I was motivated by the heroism I witnessed on September 11 and wanted to be a part of making sure that an attack like that never happened again.?

After I told my story on one police podcast, the host noted that the vast majority of new officers entering service were born after 9/11 or were too young to remember it. I hadn't considered it until that moment, but we are nearing a generational shift. Many who entered service because of 9/11 are approaching retirement, or are already gone.?

On September 11, 2001, I might’ve been the last person on the Eastern seaboard to learn about the attacks. I was about to turn 22, and working my first post college job as a field archaeologist on the Canadian border in Downeast Maine.

In 2001, in that part of Maine, cell phone towers were few and far between.? And so, it wasn’t until we rolled back into Machias that evening that my Nextel began to buzz with voicemail from family and friends.

The next three days were a blur.?

With no communication in the field, we listened to battery powered boom box for news updates and rushed through our work hoping to finish the contract early.? We were a team of zombies, shuffling through the day, waiting for the next news break on the radio.

With each passing day more filtered in about the victims from Maine who had been killed in the attacks.?Within days we also knew that Mohammad Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari had begun their Tuesday morning at the Portland International Jetport, boarding a plane to Logan where they would later hijack American Airlines Flight 11.? And as the timeline began to emerge of their travel in Southern Maine in the days before the attack, I was shocked to learn that the terrorists shopped at the Wal-Mart in my hometown and ordered from the Pizza Hut where my best friend waited tables.

On Friday, the owner of our company joined us in the field.? He was somber as he gathered us together.

“I got a call from the FBI yesterday,” he explained.? “They’re calling archaeologists up and down the East Coast looking for volunteers to help in Manhattan.”

“Why archaeologists?” asked one of my colleagues.

“Because the FBI has never had to process a crime scene this large and they need a lot of people who are skilled at sifting through debris for evidence,” he replied. Left unsaid, but understood by all, was the type of evidence we would be asked to find - tiny pieces of human bone pulverized by the collapse of two of the world’s largest office towers.

We were never sent to what they were then calling "the pile," but that conversation set me on the path to a career in federal law enforcement, and I soon began sending applications to every federal vacancy that posted.

Twenty-three years later that week is still vivid in my mind. My closest friends and I were all moved to service following 9/11. Three of us went into law enforcement and two others joined the army. But by the time the calamitous withdraw from Kabul bookended the Global War on Terror twenty years later, several of us had come to question the impact and value of our service.

While my OEF veteran friends seethed at the disorder in Afghanistan, I fumed over millions upon millions of unvetted individuals being waived across our borders. I found myself asking what difference my service on the border had actually made? Was my country any safer than it had been on September 10, 2001?

And what about the country we pledged to serve??America had long ago tuned out. Politics replaced patriotism, and in short order, the networks even stopped showing images of the attacks.?

Yes, those patriotic and unified days in the fall of 2001 were real. They happened. But in hindsight, they were more like a moment in time than a cultural shift. And they stand in stark contrast to the division and disillusionment that define today's cultural and political discourse.

This reality has been deeply frustrating at times. And when I find myself discouraged by external events, I turn to Marcus Aurelius' Meditations for guidance. Across its pages he spoke to similar frustrations, and regularly reminded himself that he was not responsible for the actions, attitudes or efforts of others - only his own - and that pursuing a life of virtue was its own reward.

In one passage, he stated: "Just that you do the right thing, the rest does not matter. Cold or warm, tired or well-rested, despised or honored."

Though he penned it nearly two millennia ago, that line wouldn't be out of place on any white board in any muster room in any police department in America. The time and place do not matter, only the pursuit of virtue.

In that passage, the emperor appeared to be referencing the summum bonum, or "highest good," which Cicero defined as a life lived in accordance with reason and guided by moral principles - particularly the cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.

Cicero believed that just as a compass has a true north, so too must each of us. And by setting our personal and professional true north on a course towards the highest good, we are more likely to do the right thing along the way, regardless of the outcome.?

To many of my friends and colleagues, the summum bonum was serving their country or community after it was attacked. They did their duty. And while decisions in service of political agendas may have squandered the?gains that were made by their efforts,?the virtue of that service is not diminished. They did the right thing, the rest does not matter.

As my generation's service nears its end, we still live in a world full of injustice, selfishness, cruelty and pain. We always will. But regardless of the circumstances of the moment, virtue is still the answer. And today's young police officers and federal agents didn't need to live through the events of 9/11 to be guided by that same instinct that motivated many of us. They simply followed their true north.

As Marcus Aurelius said, "The others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted. Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature - along the road they share."

As my generation can tell them, the path they will walk may not always be easy, and their efforts may not always be recognized or appreciated by those around them. But it is essential, and always will be.

Out of Role!

Kristofor Healey is a former award-winning Special Agent who spent more than 15 years investigating large scale tele-fraud, employee misconduct and public corruption cases for the Department of Homeland Security. He shares daily stoic quotes, relatable stories, and journal prompts in his new book, In Valor: 365 Stoic Meditations for First Responders and on his FREE Substack channel, The Stoic Responder. He provides stoic leadership training to law enforcement agencies and can be booked ?for speaking engagements through the Team Never Quit Speakers Bureau. He can be reached at his website, www.kristoforhealey.com.