Missing the 7.30 a.m. express train from New Brunswick to New York's Penn Station meant deep trouble. Bracing the unseasonal snow, I parked my car across the station and ran up the escalator just as the train was about to close doors.

As I dashed in, I caught sight of a policeman with his sniffer dog on the platform. The door closed on that view and in a moment, the train moved on. I dumped my bag on an empty seat and looked around. The compartment was full of people making the morning commute to the Big Apple. Some were fast asleep - God knows what unearthly hour they had to leave home to begin their commute. Some were reading the morning paper, some looking at the listless wintry morning whiz past the glass windows. "What would I do," I asked myself, "if, this very moment, the train were to blow apart in a deafening blast, with glass, sharp nails and other projectiles flying about? How would that change my life? What would happen to my wife of 24 years and two children?"

I felt queasy - I did not want to think about the possibility.

The greatest thing going for us is the ability to shut things out with the ease with which a child watching television shuts out his or her environment. That ability is about survival. Yet, the grim reality is that the train I was travelling on could have been the target of insane individuals who are at large across the world. After 45 minutes, the train pulled up, people woke up from their innocent sleep, others looked up from the newspapers they were buried in and shuffled their way out.

I changed to an underground train they call the Path Train that would take me to the reconstructed World Trade Center Station, from where I was to walk to my Wall Street venue for the morning's meeting. The thought of the World Trade Center froze me.

If Madrid was far away and my conjuring up images of a horrible possibility was a passing thought of an anxious mind, the memories of World Trade Center were certainly not. It was here three years ago, two of my colleagues had a near-death experience when terror hit the Twin Towers: Jay Prakash ran down the stairs - all of 52 floors - and Prince Manuel caught an elevator going down. Both ran to safety in the narrow corridor that Death spared between the first plane crashing and the second one. Our customer, Rod Wotton, who was headed out with them, turned back to get something but never returned. Engulfed in smoke, all he could do was call his wife, who was to deliver their second child the following week. Her old parents, who had come to their house to help her, had more knowledge about what was going on. Rod did not. They were able to watch on television what Rod could not. They all knew very well that he was going to die but could not tell him. They wanted to talk to him  till such time his voice could be heard on the phone, all the family could do was sob...

I got down at the vast dug up space of silence where the Twin Towers once stood and started walking to my meeting. For the hundredth time, I wondered: when would all this stop? The easy answer is, it will not; not any time soon, one reason being that the world is caught in a trap where violence is avenged with violence. That, in the history of humanity, has been a no-win situation. The ability to forgive - and not fix - can give world leaders the power to move on. It is the more difficult to accept, but is the stronger force.

Mahatma Gandhi used non-violence to bring freedom to the world's largest democracy. Nelson Mandela used the same power to liberate South Africa. Moses led his army to the Promised Land against the brutal force of the Pharaohs - with a stick he never wielded. Each of these examples had its geo-political context. In today's world, violence has become a cross-border issue, tangled in a web that involves religion, poverty, guns and drugs. This in turn points to larger developmental issues from Somalia to Kandahar underscoring the fact that poverty anywhere is a threat to peace everywhere.

The birth of a new world order and a leadership mindset based on inclusive thinking has become critical for human continuity.

We simply cannot go on the way we are.