Sometimes, just when we think we know stuff, and we think we are very smart, we need to look back to see where we've come from. Usually, we only have to go back as far as Shakespeare to realize that "been there, done that" happened a long time ago.

Today we are going back way before Shakespeare to Cicero, whose by-line appeared more than two thousand years ago, but whose words ring through to the heart today.

Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered. Cicero, De Officiis [44 B.C.], 2.7.24

When we saw that quote, we immediately correlated it to our ongoing national reaction to the events of 9/11/2001. There are chronicling events that profoundly affect our lives, and 9/11 is now prominent amongst them. When we look back on those events, we often use them to gauge our progress - or not - in this adventure called life.

Each person looks at those chronicling incidents through the filter of his or her own experiences and opinions. While there are many parallel responses, no two reactions could or should be identical.

Success in life is often tied to two little words. Those words are attachment and loss.

We attach by several different methods, primary amongst which are habits and familiarity. We deal with loss in much the same way, using the familiar habits we have observed and practiced over a lifetime, right or wrong, good or bad, but always familiar. How well we deal with the loss of the people, property, and ideas we are attached to, dictates how well we will respond in the crisis those losses create.

We approach this year’s holiday season looking inwards at our own immediate families and communities, and outwards at our larger society, our country, our world. We are still mindful of the events of 9/11, from the point of view of attachment and loss and familiarity.

What exactly were we attached to, and precisely what did we lose? And more importantly, how do we complete our relationship to the elements of loss that may continue to restrict our daily lives?

First, let us delicately distinguish ourselves from those who were directly impacted by the death of loved ones in any of the events surrounding that now infamous date. Their losses were very real, very tangible, in the deaths of loved ones, and the end of hopes, dreams, and expectations about their futures together.

For the rest of us, the loss factors are a little less tangible. Collectively, as a society, we experienced Loss of Safety, Loss of Trust, Loss of Control, and above all, Loss of Freedom. That last, Loss of Freedom, is a multi-faceted enemy which shows its face in many ways. Our willingness to travel and move freely about our own land being just one of them.

Within our own borders, we had been exceptionally free to move about at will. We had been attached to a sense of safety, a sense of trust, a sense of control and indeed to a great sense of freedom, for a long time. As a country, we had enjoyed an almost unprecedented time in which most of us never gave a second thought to those things we had never been given reason to question.

Now we question them regularly.

Shortly after the First Remembrance of 9/11 the Beltway Snipers re-engaged the monster of terror, and paralyzed entire communities in their wake. Once again, we began to look at life through our personal filters of fear, cautious and ever vigilant for anything that would put us in danger, anything that would restrict our freedoms, our safety, our trust, and control.

The very freedom which we lost, and which we are fighting hard to regain, must be honored, cherished, and defended with all at our disposal. We must complete our relationship to the loss we’ve experienced so we can rekindle the sense of freedom and safety necessary to walk comfortably in our own land.