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| By Nilus Mattive |
It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since a plane hit the World Trade Center while I was in the basement of the building getting off a train.
I didn’t know it when the doors opened and I first smelled the smoke.
I didn’t know it when I saw the police running down the stairs as I went up to the ground level.
I didn’t know it as I stepped over broken high heels, bagels and other signs of people running for their lives.
This will sound crazy, but I didn’t even know it as I looked up at the gaping hole in the building from across the street.
I stared for a minute and then started walking down to my office building.
There were papers — what seemed like important papers — scattered on the ground several blocks away.
It didn’t occur to me what type of explosion it would have taken to get them there. Or all the glass and other shrapnel.
When I heard an explosion coming from the vicinity of World Trade Center, I was right in front of the New York Stock Exchange.
Did I stop? Only for a second or two. Just long enough to hear a floor trader tell someone that “another plane” had hit the Trade Center. The comment just didn’t make any sense to me.
It wasn’t until I got to my office building and saw my co-workers pouring out that I realized something bigger was happening.
The basic consensus was that we were under attack. More planes were on the way. It was possible we were being bombed.
I decided to get out of there, so I got on an N/R train heading back uptown.
At the Cortlandt Street station, directly under the World Trade Center, people were swarming into the cars.
Looks of shock and horror. Talk of people panicking and jumping. Grisly stuff.
I got off at 14th Street and started walking to the PATH station. I could see smoke billowing off in the distance.
In a stroke of luck, I managed to get on just before all the transit lines stopped running.
Not long after that, I came out of the Hoboken station on the New Jersey side and went over to Frank Sinatra Park right around the corner.
There, with a direct view of Lower Manhattan across the Hudson River, I watched the first tower fall down right before my eyes.
It was hard to connect all the dots of what had just happened and my own little full circle inside of it all.
Everything had changed in a single hour.
It went from a normal morning commute to what seemed like the end of the world.
And that’s a lesson I’ve carried with me ever since — one that everyone, especially investors, should learn.
Things happen. Situations come to a head. You might just happen to find yourself in the middle of it, on some random Tuesday with blue skies and perfect fall weather.
You should make sure your portfolio — and your mind — are ready if something like that happens.
At the same time, I’m not telling you to live in fear.
Quite the opposite.
Prepare for the worst but make the best of every minute you can!
That’s precisely why I spent Sept. 12, 2001, surfing the northernmost beach in New Jersey.
As I rode waves from a distant hurricane’s swell, I could see the smoke still billowing in Lower Manhattan 24 hours later.
I now knew that a black swan could swoop down from the sky and try to kill me at any point in time.
Which also meant that my time was precious and I should savor things just a little bit more every step of the way.
Best wishes,
Nilus Mattive
