I’m writing this while flying home from what’s scheduled to be my last 2011 trip to meet with advisors and investors around the country. This year, I’ve spent about 85 days in the field and racked up in excess of 125,000 airline miles getting there and back (OK—I confess I’ve included one pretty distant vacation in that total). But as we reach the end of this segment of the road, I think things are getting better.

Let’s be clear. I, like many others, thought 2011 would see better growth in the U.S. economy than the couple of percentage points we’ll probably end up with. Maybe I could have better understood the global impact of tightening policy in key emerging economies, as policymakers tried to cool economies that threatened to overheat. I suppose I also should have realized that the political and economic obstacles Europeans faced—and continue to face—in controlling their debt problems would reduce both investors’ and business people’s appetite for risk, and dampen both growth and the equity markets. And while the physical earthquakes in Japan and political earthquakes in the Middle East were somewhat beyond my powers of soothsaying, they also contributed to a disappointing year. But a disappointing year does not necessarily mean it was a bad year.

In 11 months we’ve created 1.4 million[1] more jobs than we’ve lost. The private sector, in fact, added 1.7 million[2] workers even as state and local governments continue to shed staff. We’re on track to buy more than 13 million cars this year, which means lots of people are building, delivering and selling these cars. Industrial production keeps rising and businesses are investing in capital equipment. Corporate earnings are growing each quarter as American businesses continue to achieve greater efficiencies and discover markets in parts of the world growing more rapidly than we are.

Yet, the theme that runs through the questions I’ve been asked (literally) in every corner of the country has been, what is the next big disaster going to be? Scenarios mentioned have included a range of possible calamities from inflation to deflation to anarchy.

Now the mood has brightened a bit. The deepest feelings of pessimism have clearly started to fade, but no one seems to be asking what the next big opportunity is going to be—and that is exactly the question we should be asking. We’ve learned how to cope with slow growth and fiscal problems here and abroad, and we must be prepared if those problems should deepen. But if the damage of a financial crisis takes about seven years to resolve, we’re probably more than halfway there, and it’s time to start preparing for where the growth is going to be on the other side.

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