I remember the silence. The planes from Logan airport that struck the World Trade Center were long gone from the clear blue skies as I drove onto the expressway in Boston. All air traffic was grounded and hardly any cars were on the road either. It was as if the world were stunned into silence.

The only place I felt any sense of ease was at work in those days. An editor at the Boston Globe, I felt I was at least doing something constructive at work. Otherwise, I couldn't tear my eyes away from television screens that kept the destruction of the twin towers on a repeating loop that felt like someone kicking me in the gut over and over.

We all stayed at work for dozens of hours a day. Our reporting was far from comforting: We tracked the movements of the hijackers around familiar spots in our own backyard.

Those details were important to uncover, but they seemed small in the face of so much pain for so many people.

I am one of many people who thought our country would shrink away from meaningless reality shows and senseless violence after such a horrific event. That we would hold on to this sense of what really matters. That the heroism of the firefighters and police would move us all to a selfless commitment to others.

Five years later, we find that the horror was used as an excuse to steal our precious freedoms and an arrogant march into battle against people we don't understand.

I long now for that silence.