You are the diplomats, the representatives of the world over here.You are going into the nowhere to search and to be intrigued at the smallest inkling of discovery.You are representing us to discover, explore, and find the possibility to escape the box known as earth, and go as far as possible.You have the responsibility to push thinking and ideas beyond limits, into the ethers, through the nothing into the something.Dave Lanstein, age 16The world counts on you to open up new possibilities and discover what we humans can do.The only time when music or space have boundaries is when humans create them.Thank you for keeping the possibilities alive.Not long after, I received a communication from the project manager.The students communicated in a way that those of us who work here have never been able to express.As you know, each person asked for a copy of the letters and was overwhelmed by the power of the message and the talent of your students.Our people were so moved that they decided to write letters to your class.Please let your students know that when we showed the letters to one of our Space Station senior managers, the decision was made to include them on future space missions.Your students’ words will continue to inspire our explorers, especially during the long and isolated times when they will face their greatest challenges in space.Their words and aspirations are now circling the earth on the International Space Station.Often we hear about the high cost of space flight but not very often the positive aspects.The way that you pointed out the positive aspects brought a tear to the eyes of many of us.Thank you for reminding me of what I am here for.I will have to remember I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators. Thanks.Thank you for your beautiful and eloquent words of encouragement on space exploration.They so poetically remind us of our grander purpose.Coming from you, explorers of sounds and keepers of the future, they are particularly meaningful.Each of us, in our own way, works to evoke a greater depth of understanding of our past, present and future.May your sounds reach the stars.It trains us to be alert to a new danger that threatens modern life—the danger that unseen definitions, assumptions, and frameworks may be covertly chaining us to the downward spiral and shaping the conditions we want to change.But look what magical powers we have!We can make a conscious use of our way with words to define new frameworks for possibility that bring out the part of us that is most contributory, most unencumbered, most open to participation.And why not say that is who we really are?Here is an example of a leader, framing possibility, offering a new way for us to define ourselves.Nelson Mandela is reported to have addressed these words of Marianne Williamson’s to the world at large.Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented,and fabulous—Actually, who are you not to be?Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that otherpeopleWon’t feel insecure around you.When I was nearing the end of my first sojourn in America on a limited visa, I set up a program that allowed me to take a group of American high school students back to England to study music for a year.Each of their high school principals in the United States had miraculously agreed to give them a full year’s credit for the time spent there.I rented a house for them near Hampstead Heath in London, and instituted a complete course of study that included music, art, philosophy, and English.I arranged each week for a scholar to come to a dinner cooked by the students, to talk to them about his or her particular field.On one occasion I invited my father, Walter Zander, who had devoted a lifetime to thinking and writing about conflict, especially the conflict between Jews and Arabs.By candlelight over a dinner into which the students had put extra care, he began by describing the whole sweep of Jewish history reaching back to the days of Abraham.He poured his passion into the tale—the great biblical stories, the medieval ages, the accomplishments in the arts and sciences, the story of the Diaspora and the tragedy of the Holocaust.He brought the whole saga down to rest on the tiny sliver of land called Palestine in 1947, the year before the land was partitioned between Arabs and Jews so that the Jews could have a homeland.Then he went back and narrated the whole sweep of the history of the Arab people.He again started with Abraham, the acknowledged ancestor of the Arabs as well as of the Jews.He spoke of Arabic sciences and learning, the magnificent library at Alexandria, the great artistic achievements—the tapestries and the architecture, the music and the literature, the folkloric Tales of the Arabian Nights.Above all he spoke of the legendary courtesy of the Arab people.What was most striking was that he seemed to speak with equal enthusiasm whether he was speaking about the Jews or the Arabs.What can we invent that will take us from an entrenched posture of hostility to one of enthusiasm and deep regard?To begin the inquiry, we have distinguished a new entity that personifies the togetherness of you and me and others.It emerges in the way music emerges from individual notes when a phrase is played as one long line, in the way a landscape coalesces out of the multicolored strokes of an Impressionist painting when you get some distance, and in the way a family comes into being when a first child is born.It says we are our central selves seeking to contribute, naturally engaged, forever in a dance with each other.It points to relationship rather than to individuals, to communication patterns, gestures, and movement rather than to discrete objects and identities.This practice points the way to a kind of leadership based not on qualifications earned in the field of battle, but on the courage to speak on behalf of all people and for the long line of human possibility.Listen and look for the emerging entity.Go to the store! she said, addressing me imperiously while gazing off into the distance.Go to the store and get me what I want. I stifled a smile, and did proper homage to the solemn nature of the request.Yes, your majesty, I replied, bowing.I left her in the room to wait for me and crossed the street to the little corner store.I was enjoying the game, particularly because I prided myself on my sensitivity in finding the right things for people.This would solidify our relationship, I thought, wearing my therapist hat and taking myself quite seriously.I perused the shelves.What would she want?She wasn’t a junk food sort of girl.A fat can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew arrested my eye, momentarily.Then my gaze roamed over the sodas and juices in the refrigerated section and returned to the canned foods.I selected the Dinty Moore.In the room with the blue shag rug and the simple white curtains, Victoria stood poised, her head cocked, staring at the paper bag in my hand.Then all at once I realized, I am at her mercy.I realized we were at a critical point in the narrative.She was going to declare who we were, whether we were together or miles apart.Courageously I faced her.Bravely she faced me back.She took the bag, opened it carefully, and extracted the can of Dinty Moore.Oh, Miss Stone, she said, relief suffusing her face.The assumption is that people are singular, constant beings whose stated desires are for all time.So it follows that some will win and some will lose, and neither are likely to get all they want.It encourages us to exaggerate our positions and keep back some of the truth, and it pushes us into offensive and defensive positions, so that we are all too soon handing out ultimatums and guarding our turf.It assumes there are no fixed wants nor static desires, while everything each of us thinks and feels has a place in the dialogue.He says, Give me a raise or I’m quitting my job.