Thoughts on Possibility (After the Explosions)
by Thom Haller - September 13, 2001

It's morning in Washington DC, two days after terrorists slammed planes into buildings, killing thousands, and shaking the way many of us perceive our world. During the last two days I've repeatedly heard people say we will never look at the world in the same way again.

Yesterday I left home - slightly apprehensively - to teach. I'd wondered how I might approach my course on web writing. In Washington, we're apprehensive. We hear choppers and jets overhead; we feel a little uneasy taking public transportation. Our lives are out of sync - schools are closed but our businesses are open. As I write this, many Washingtonians still await word of family and friends buried in the Pentagon and lower Manhattan. It's not a great context for teaching.

My class was slow to start. I'd imagined that many would stay home, but students filtered in slowly. I began the class by acknowledging, that perhaps the last place they might want to be is in a room talking about web writing. "Ummmmm-hmmmmmm," one of my students uttered. "You've got that right."

So how could I offer value on such a difficult day? I offered some thoughts that I decided to pass on to our electronic community as well.

"As long as we're seeing the world differently," I mentioned, "we might want to reflect on the thinking/writing of theologian Martin Buber." In his book I and Thou, Buber described two competing ways to see the world - "I-it," and "I-thou." When you view anything with an "I-it" perspective, you value it insofar as it meets your purposes. An "I-thou" relationship is a relationship based on respect.

Writing, I believe, offers us a grand opportunity to frame our work in respect. We have the opportunity to construct information to help people do what they want to do so they appreciate the experience. This requires that we ask them what they want to know - and then we work as hard as we might to craft the information to help them out as much as possible.

For me, writing offers opportunities for directing, guiding, helping others. Perhaps we think, "why bother" in a world where horrible evils threaten our personal peace. Well, we can dwell there, or we can use this moment when our worldview is shifting to see our work-world differently. We have the opportunity to shift our focus from one of resignation to one of possibility.

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