Barely a week after 9/11, a group came together for a workshop in Montreal. After we’d puzzled our way through some of the ideas you’ve read about here, I asked them: So what is it that we’re working toward? After all is said and done, what kind of world do you want? Can you express it in a single word, or maybe two?

I’d asked these questions of groups many times before. That afternoon it was different. I spoke with a lump in my throat. The words came out softly, in my deepest voice.

The first person to answer said she wanted a “safe” world. Heads nodded. We could all relate to that.

I wrote “safe” at the very top of the large sheet of paper on the wall.

Only seconds passed before Virginia Henderson offered another view. “I think it’s a different world than safe,” she said. “I think that’s past.”

She paused and smiled slightly.

“It’s a confident world I want.”

In that moment, Virginia changed our reality. We’d been focused on our despair, our fear, our hunger for security, and the apparently insoluble problem of terrorism. Under the circumstances, it seemed unthinkable to speak of anything else.

Virginia’s words brought our inner resources into view, and opened the possibility that we might face the future with courage and strength.

I wrote “confident” next to “safe.” We worked a few minutes more. Then I posed another question that I always ask: Can we see any evidence of the kind of world we want, here and now—any sign that at least some of what we want is already here?

The group had gravitated toward the notion of a “confident” world, so I picked up on that and added, “any evidence that you can see of a confident world?”

Silence. All of us, eyes moist, turned to look at Virginia, who had flown half-way around the world from Australia.

(Oh, I still savor that moment.)

What might we do with all that “oomph” behind us?

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