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A look back at Sep. 11th 2001 and the importance of looking for valuable lessons and understanding during tough times in life.

Transcription

Tragedy isn’t.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Unlike our normal, regularly scheduled program, this is not necessarily going to be the fun and laughter time, but I want to hit on something very serious that goes along with the serious attitude.

So today, I’m recording this September 11th 2021. This is 20 years past the original date, have one of the worst losses of life all at one time of civilians in the United States ever, possibly in the world, all at once, in a very short span of time, lost over 3000 civilians in an act of war.

At the time, I remember was a very clear understanding that a lot of people referred to it as a tragedy right away and wanted to kind of wallow in the woe is us how horrible and it was horrible. And it should be recognized that it’s horrible.

But in the same end, it’s a call to action. And there comes those points in your life, whether it’s a world-changing situation, like September 11, was whether you’re old enough to remember it or not.

There are these world-changing situations that can hit you hard. And then there are personal situations that hit you hard, I’m going to talk about two of them real quick.

The first one happened to me earlier in the year 2000. And I had just recently moved away from town away from my family, a good three hours away…two and a half, three hours, and was off on my own going to college for the first time.

Through a whole series of events that I’ve discussed before. There was a huge mix-up with the people that I thought were going to be joining me and all these future endeavors that we had all got flushed down the toilet pretty quickly.

Now what ended up happening out of that is I found myself in a town that I really didn’t want to be and going to a school I really didn’t want to go to, for a degree I really didn’t want, for a future that was quite unknown to me at the time that I thought had I had figured out previously.

But everything kind of went down the toilet and so I was left with a scenario.

It was a call to action.

But I knew that there was a reason why I was there at that point at that time. And because of that scenario, I came in contact with somebody through a very thin thread and changed my life very quickly.

This is a six-month period that I happen to be in this one spot work in this one particular job when a complete stranger came up and change my life. Fast forward a little bit, and not long after that, a few months later, I ended up moving to Sacramento, California. And ended up going in a new direction, trying out some new things.

My world had been rocked but I wasn’t quite sure to what extent ended up working in the tallest building in Sacramento, which at that time may still be I’m not sure the Wells Fargo building, downtown Sacramento and having a blast having, a very good time doing something very new, working in a very different environment for one of the largest law firms in all Sacramento and having a really good time and then and really not knowing what was next.

I had a past, I had ideas of what things I could do, but not really sure where to take it next. Then September 11 happened one morning. I was used to waking up a little later in the day.

Because I had a job that didn’t require me to be in super early I would stroll in around 11 o’clock. And it was a part-time job but it was enough to kind of keep me going and allowed me to continue going to school and so forth.

So I end up getting a call from my best friend and he says to turn on the TV. You won’t believe what’s going on, we’re under attack.

So I’m watching this and I had a little bit of a political background. So I thought I figured out who the culprits were right off the bat, I was wrong. But watched everything occur there and went through all the same things that so many other people did then what it brought me to though is I realized I was at another crossroad, I was at another place where I was going to be taken in a different direction.

I knew what was happening, meant action. And it didn’t mean I was going to go off and join the military. That wasn’t where I saw myself going. It wasn’t where I ended up. But I knew that it meant action on my part in some way, what ends up happening is, a month later, I got a call saying, hey, I need your help on something, once you move, move on out and help me if you’re willing to.

And I said, Yeah, that’s it. That was the that was what I was waiting for.

There’s a point at which you’re going to be called to action. And oftentimes, everyone else may be referring to it as a tragedy. And there’s nothing wrong with seeing…I wish I had a better way of putting it opportunity behind a tragedy.

There’s nothing wrong with seeing the good thing out of something horrible, horrendous things that should never have happened. You have to be able to look at it and see what to take from it, and how to take something that’s horrible and create something positive.

It goes far beyond lemons out of lemonade, it is much worse. But you have to be able to do that, to be able to survive on earth and to be able to go forward and do what you need to do. You have to be able to have that right attitude.

Otherwise, the terrorists win. Okay?

It’s an old saying, but it’s true. There are people and there are the forces working behind people that are out to tear us down. Not Americans, I’m saying to tear down what’s decent about you.

And they’ll do that, through intimidation, they’ll do that through horror, through terror, through any means necessary to get you to react to them, to make them more powerful than you in your mind.

What you have to do is be able to stand back, see it for what it is and wait for the next invitation, the next place to go next. I’m not sure if I’m hitting on on anything that makes sense to you. But I’ve seen this throughout my life, whether it’s something very personal, like what happened to me in the first story, or something that I shared with a whole lot of people around the world was September 11, opportunity comes in very strange packages.

And I don’t believe that tragedy is a real thing unless you take it to be a tragedy.

There are events that have tragic elements to them. Horrible situations that should never happen. But if you don’t have anything to do with it, you don’t have to take it on as something that does anything for you besides, drives you in a positive direction.

Hopefully, that makes sense. I’ve got a book I’ve talked about every night.

You can go and check it out over at AmazonProofBook.com not going to talk about it tonight. We’re just getting into it right there, you have a great night.

Get out there and let the magic happen.