The Psalmist instructs us to number our days “that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

Of course, in our numerically oriented society, each day has already been meticulously numbered and sequenced. Imagine the chaos if an airplane reservation ticket declared that the time of departure was no more explicit than “somewhere in November”; or that those precious tickets to a New England Patriots home game merely said, “sometime in October.” Ours is a society that craves specificity and precision, and a civilization that measures the merit of its individuals by the most egregious of quantitative criteria.

Every month has a fourth day. Yet when Americans say, “The Fourth,” solely July springs forth into our consciousness as an homage to the birth of this nation’s Declaration of Independence. In Mexico, a similar reflex reaction is elicited with the Fifth of May (Cinco de Mayo), a holiday commemorating the Mexican struggle against the invading French armies in the indecisive Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. (Mexico’s Independence Day, however, is September 16.) And in France, at least for those who have been French for two or more generations, there is a spiritual reverence for the Fourteenth of July, (quatorze juillet) a French national celebration commemorating the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789.

Most months are bereft of such uniquely special holidays, days of such historic specificity that the mere mention of the day’s number elicits a flood of venerable remembrances. Americans, however, do abide with the sobering memory that on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists commandeered four civilian airplanes and used them as destructive missiles against buildings in New York City and Virginia — and perhaps Washington, D.C., too, had it not been for the bravery of passengers in the fourth airliner who forced the plane down in a Pennsylvania pasture.

Sept. 11, 2001, known now simply as 9/11, is etched deeply in this nation’s roster of happenings not to be forgotten. And again, the Psalmist tells us: “Thou hast made the earth to tremble, thou has broken it; Thou has shown thy people hard things; thou has made us drink the wine of astonishment.” And so, after 9/11, this nation must now relearn, despite the demands of enhanced security, the cherished human values that must be preserved at whatever cost.

— Stanley M. Aronson