On September 11, 2001, most people started the morning expecting an ordinary Tuesday.

People arrived at work. Passengers boarded airplanes. Parents dropped children off at school. First responders began another shift.

Then the ordinary disappeared.

At the World Trade Center, firefighters and police officers entered buildings that thousands of people were trying to escape. Office workers helped injured coworkers reach the stairs. Strangers steadied one another as they made their way down. Some people who could have gone faster chose instead to stay with someone who could not.

No one stopped to ask whether the person beside them shared their politics, religion, background, or opinions. They saw someone who needed help.

That was enough.

The people aboard Flight 93 faced a different situation. Through calls with family members, friends, and authorities, they learned that other hijacked planes had struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They understood that their plane was part of the same attack.

The calls from Flight 93 gave the passengers and crew a clearer picture of what was happening. They talked it over and took a vote. Then they moved toward the cockpit. There was no reason to believe they would survive, but waiting meant the hijackers would decide what happened next.

They acted together because the purpose in front of them was greater than the fear each person must have felt.

At the Pentagon, the attack brought smoke, fire, damaged corridors, and confusion. People who had been sitting at desks moments earlier began helping the injured. Some who had reached safety went back to look for others. Pentagon employees worked alongside military personnel, medical teams, and first responders.

The usual lines of authority still existed, but they became less important than the need in front of them.

The question was no longer, ?Is this my responsibility??

It became, ?What can I do??

These stories are remembered because the actions were extraordinary. But they also reveal something uncomfortable about us.

We often find it easier to come together when we have a shared enemy.

A threat gives people something they immediately understand. Differences which seemed important yesterday suddenly look small. The argument that once divided the room loses some of its power when everyone realizes they are standing in the same burning building.

You didn?t have to look very far to see that something had changed. Flags were displayed from porches, storefronts, and highway overpasses. People reached out to neighbors they hardly knew. We still disagreed with one another, but the need to win every argument seemed less important for a while.

That time was not as united as we sometimes remember it. Fear also caused people to turn on Muslim Americans, Sikh Americans, and others who had nothing to do with the attacks. Some people found compassion while others looked for someone to blame. Both happened, and leaving out the second part does not honor the first.

Still, many people remember a feeling that has become difficult to find: We stood united in this.

Twenty-five years later, we seem more practiced at identifying our differences than recognizing what we share. We ask which side someone is on before deciding whether their concern deserves to be heard. We treat disagreement as evidence of bad character. Too often, we speak about other Americans as though they are the enemy.

That may rally people for a while, but it is not leadership.

Creating unity by giving people someone to hate is easy. Anger supplies its own energy. It does not require much vision to point across a dividing line and say, ?Those people are the reason for everything that is wrong.?

Real leadership requires more.

A leader must help people see what they can build, protect, or complete together. That purpose must be clear enough to survive disagreement. People do not need to think alike, vote alike, worship alike, or come from the same background. They need a reason to believe that working together matters more than defeating one another.

The leadership lesson from September 11 is not that we should wait for another crisis to bring out the best in us.

It is that the capacity is already there.

We saw it in the stairwells of the Towers. We saw it among the passengers and crew of Flight 93. We saw it in the damaged corridors and burning rooms of the Pentagon. In each place, people responded to what needed to be done and to the people beside them.

That is not where most of us will be tested. More often than not, it will be an ordinary day when someone needs help, and everyone else assumes someone will handle it. We may have plenty of time to think about what to do, but that does not always make it easier to step up.

Will we keep protecting our side, or will we recognize the person in front of us?

?Never Forget? should mean more than remembering the attacks and honoring those who were lost. It should also mean remembering what ordinary people were capable of when something became more important than their differences.

We should not need another tragedy to remember that we belong to one another.

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