Three years ago today, I watched the towers burn from the rooftop of my office building.

Some of my friends were even closer.

I consider myself remarkably fortunate that I did not know anyone who was killed that day. In fact, I know several people who for one reason or another avoided death.

Seth MacFarlane—the creator of the TV show The Family Guy and with whom I went to high school—told me that he had a ticket on Flight 11 out of Boston. He got caught in traffic and arrived late. If not for that traffic, he would have died in the first plane to hit the World Trade Center.

A former coworker was attending a week-long seminar held at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop one of the towers. He was so bored in the first day of the seminar that he decided to skip the morning session of the second day. That boredom saved his life.

Several months before the attacks, I applied for a job at a software company in the World Trade Center. I ended up taking another job.

It’s strange how fate marks some and not others, and it’s easy for those of us who weren’t personally affected to feel guilty for being spared pain that has been spread so widely. None of those thousands of people deserved to die that day, but die they did. I’ll never be able to answer the question why, so all I can do is honor them in my own little way, by doing my part to ensure that we bring about a world where that will never happen again.

To all those who greet this day with an emptiness I can’t fathom, my thoughts are with you.