Like most people I remember where I was. It’s funny how some things can turn the most mundane things into something that is seared into your brain. It was pretty simple. I was driving to work at the worst company on the planet, Aon Consulting, and Howard Stern was not talking about anything very interesting. The sun was shining. It was, without a doubt, a gorgeous day. The sky was cloudless. The blue was the kind of crystal blue normally reserved for late winter skies. So, I flipped over to the all-news radio station here in Chicago. Literally at that very second the announcer interrupted the normal flow of traffic and city news.

“We’re going live to our New York affiliate,” the announcer said. “There have been reports that a plane has hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center.”

As a history buff I remembered the story of the bomber that flew into the Empire State Building. The reports were frantic. There was a fire in the tower. There were people scrambling all over the place. No one was sure if the plane was a commuter plane or a jet. There were some witnesses and they were telling conflicting stories of the size and shape of the plane. Some reported that it sounded to them like the pilot had accelerated into the building.

I sat and I listened. I was dumb-founded. Still, it sounded like a disaster. Given the weather I couldn’t see how this was possible but nothing was clear. I had visions of a plane losing control and power and falling out of the sky and into the tower. I had not seen pictures of the plane flying into the tower. Heck, pictures of the plane flying into the first tower wouldn’t emerge for days. So, I listened with interest but it was not yet something that would sear into my brain. That all changed just as I neared the entrance to the parking lot of the building where I worked.

As I sat stunned at a red light I heard as the announcers nearly screamed and fell all over themselves describing how a second plane had struck the second tower. In just a few seconds it went from a tragic disaster into an attack and one that appeared to be coordinated. I picked up my cell phone and called the girl I was seeing at the time and she happened to live in Canada. She was still in bed. I told her that it looked like we were under attack.

When I got into the parking lot it was all I could do to stop myself from running into the building. I wanted to get inside and get online. I had to see what was happening. Things just got weirder from there.

It turns out that over the previous weekend a man who worked for Aon and that was known by several people I worked with had died in a motorcycle accident. I had never met this guy but I had heard his named mentioned. So, many people on that floor were already in tears. Others had gotten to work early and didn’t know what was going on. I had to be part of some kind of new hire training later in the day and that was in a downstairs conference room. The person presenting the training was going on and on as though the entire nation wasn’t under attack. I kept sneaking out to a small store located down the hall and listening to the guy’s radio. At one point there was a rumor about a plane heading for Chicago. At another time there was a rumor about a plane headed for the White House. Then there was a rumor of a car bomb somewhere in Washington.

In the days that followed it turned out that a lot of Aon employees had lost their lives. It turns out that Aon had a very large office located in the World Trade Center. These were not people I knew. They worked in a different division than I did. They did different things than I did. Still, as the announcements came and the e-mails flew and the book with information about who had died and their funerals or memorial services sprang up it all came home to me. I never would meet these people now, I thought. They were gone.

In the end that is what should really be remembered about September 11, 2001. It should not be remembered for everything that came after it. It should not be about whether or not you are Republican or Democrat. It should not be about the color of your state. It should not be about Iraq or politics. It truly wasn’t about religion or what you claimed to believe in. What it was about, at its most basic level, was a few people deciding to take the lives of thousands of other people.

Those people were just going to work like I was. They had gotten up that morning and probably marveled at the weather, like I did. They drove to work or took public transportation. They probably had better views of the city and the day and the weather than most in a building that tall. They probably walked in and took an elevator and sat down in a cubicle just like I did. They pulled up their e-mail or checked their voicemail. They probably were looking forward to their day, or maybe they were dreading it much like I did. Maybe they had plans for lunch or dinner that night. They were just people going to work and they were trying to earn a living and then someone decided it would be all right and somehow beneficial to ram an airplane into their building.

September 11, 2001 was about people trying to live their lives and other people determining that their agenda was more important. It was about the fire fighters and policemen who ran into the burning buildings and stayed there even as they saw and felt the building coming down around them. These were people with families. They had loved ones. They had beliefs and they were good and they were bad and they were humans.

It’s not about how the Constitution has been ripped apart since then. It’s not about political agendas. Its not about senators and congressmen and presidential hopefuls using what happened that day to try to get elected. September 11, 2001 is about people and it should always be about people. It should be about remembering how everything you have can be taken away in an instant. It’s about how you should always tell the people around you that you love them because you never know what could happen. Even on a clear blue, gorgeous day, all of that can end and it can end so quickly.

You have to strip the day down and separate it from the junk that has been tacked on to that day like some kind of bulletin board in a college dormitory. You need to remember the day as a way to remember those around you. Remember that we’re all just people. That’s the lesson of that day. At least for me.

Bryan W. Alaspa’s new novel Dust is now available at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.