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Carpe Diem

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Sep. 12 2007, Published 7:04 a.m. ET

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It's late on 9/11. Six years ago today I was a freelance writer who regularly slept until 10 am. That's why it was surprising when my phone rang so early that morning. My friend Robyn told me to go outside. The street in front of my apartment in downtown NYC was full of people. Then I saw it: the World Trade Center was on fire.

I ran in and woke up my roommates and we stood outside in shock, wondering what kind of accident could have happened. We were standing there when we saw a fissure go across the second building. We didn't see the plane that flew in from behind it.

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Then it was in flames as well and, with our arms around each other in the street, we knew it couldn't be an accident, but didn't know what it was. People were jumping. We were numb. We went inside where our home phone and tv were out of service. We counted on the people running through the streets for updates. My roommate and I threw shoes out the window for the woman running from the financial district in stilletos. It was a minor service, but all we knew to do.

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A week later, when the barriers preventing people from entering and exiting our block were finally taken away, the woman found the window the shoes had been tossed from and returned them, with flowers, happy for the random act of kindness.

Today, do a random act of kindness. It's the little things we do that can make the most difference in our lives and others...Ok, that was a little intense, but I'll leave you with this quote I love for now and be back with fun stuff from my day playing backstage at the fashion shows in a bit.

"All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live." — Joseph Epstein

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