With love and pain in our hearts, today we remember, cherish, and mourn the innocent victims of the heinous attacks of September 11, 2001. We honor those who were lost, those who rushed toward danger to save others, and all whose lives were forever changed. We also unequivocally condemn the murderous brutality of the terrorists and the dark ideologies that inspired them.

But this moment of pain and remembrance also asks something more of us. It calls on us to redouble our efforts to build the kind of world in which everyone can flourish.

Of course, that requires standing firmly against terrorism and other grave threats to our lives and well-being, but it also requires holding love for all people and all life in our hearts as we imagine and then work together to build the kind of world we would want to inhabit and would want future generations to inherit.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of concerned citizens from around the world came together to create OneShared.World and collectively draft our Declaration of Interdependence.

This was not an act of naïveté, but a recognition of that basic reality that our fates are inextricably intertwined in our increasingly interconnected world. If we cannot learn to address our greatest shared challenges—including climate change, nuclear proliferation, pandemics, the safe development of artificial intelligence, and so much more, all of us will ultimately pay the price.

But the opposite is also true.

If we can learn to work together and harness our extraordinary abundance, creativity, compassion, and technological capabilities for the common good, the possibilities are almost limitless. We can imagine a world where everyone has adequate food, clean water, sanitation, health care, and safety, where every child receives a quality education and has the opportunity to discover and realize their greatest gifts, where more of the vast resources now devoted to developing our capacity to harm and kill one another can instead be invested in helping people and communities thrive, where every individual is cherished, where all life can flourish, and where progress means more than GDP or corporate profits.

This vision may sound idealistic, but the truly unrealistic path is believing that eight billion deeply interconnected people sharing one fragile planet can thrive without learning to address our greatest common challenges together.

Twenty-five years after the terrible tragedy of September 11, we invite you to join us in both mourning all that was lost and investing our hopes, energies, and actions in a better future.

We hope you will please take a few minutes today to read our Declaration of Interdependence and sign the Pledge of Interdependence.

Our differences are real and important, but so are our shared humanity, our shared home, and our responsibility to one another.

With love and humility,

Your friends at OneShared.World