What kind of world do you want?

Barely a week after 9/11, a group came together for a workshop at the University of British Columbia. In the middle of our time together, I asked them:

“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.

After all, it took some nerve to ask that question at such a time of shock and grief. What room was there for high hopes when our very survival seemed to be at risk?

The first person to answer said she wanted a “safe” world.

Heads nodded.

We could all relate to that wish. I wrote “safe” at the very top of a large sheet of paper that we’d taped to the wall.

“I think it’s a different world than safe,” she said. “I think that’s past.”

“It’s a confident world I want.”

In that moment, Virginia shifted our attention. Before she spoke, we’d been focused on our despair, our fear, our hunger for security.

Under the circumstances, it had seemed unthinkable to speak of anything else.

But Virginia’s words opened the possibility that we might face the future with courage and strength.

The group gravitated toward her notion of a “confident” world. I picked up on that and asked them, “Can we see here and now any evidence that some of what we want is already here? Any evidence of a confident world?”

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

(And when she went returned home — this was her third workshop with me — she proceeded to wrap up her time as civic leader (co-founder of the Australian national Shakespeare company) and her executive role (at the National Gallery of Australia) in order to make new space for her next contribution.)

A workshop much like this (but revamped especially for these times) is at the heart of “Your 2011 Quest.”