Deep Thoughts
This is one of those responses where the accompanying videos say more than I alone can — and I suppose that is part of my point.
I have another nugget for you BFoundAPen, if you are open to a bit of perspective from the deep . . .
Life is not just linear.
It is also cyclical and recursive.
It is as often disappointing as it is surprising, tragic in one breath yet magnificent in the next.
And, every now and then, miraculous.
Even the best plans rarely execute perfectly.
BUT — with flexibility, ingenuity, and a great deal of perseverance, great things are possible.
Around the time I was conceived, humans first walked on the moon. That’s why my middle name is Neal — after Neil Armstrong — even though the spelling is different.
This incredible thing actually happened:
When one learns how mind-bogglingly difficult this task was (especially in the time alloted to accomplish it) this event takes on nearly miraculous significance. In the history of our species, it is certainly one of our greatest accomplishments.
The Saturn V rocket and the Lunar Landing module were (at the time) the largest, most complex machines ever built by humankind. Even now, there are few rivals (the Large Hadron Collider and the Space Shuttle among them). The sound made by the Saturn V was one of the loudest man-made noises ever recorded. Indeed, merely the SOUND of another such mission may require that the rocket be launched from an offshore platform to protect everyone from the sound waves:
But I digress.
What makes an event like landing on the moon so amazing is considering how many things could have gone wrong.
And did go wrong.
You see, there were COUNTLESS FAILURES throughout our collective history which let to the SUCCESS of the lunar landing in the summer of 1969.
To wit:
This tragedy occurred before you and I were even born.
Similar tragedies, the Space Shuttle Challenger:
and Challenger disasters:
are more recently enshrined in memory.
And yet . . . we walked on the moon.
Perhaps during our lifetimes, will also walk on Mars! Maybe not you or I PERSONALLY (certainly not me, I’d hurl on the launch pad), but our fellow humans and dreamers.
This video is of an event that took place a little over a year ago. The images are so amazing they seem like movie special effects. And yet this was a REAL thing that actually happened:
WE walked on the moon. WE died trying to get there. WE kept on trying, even in the face of these disasters.
It’s kinda hard to miss my rhetorical repetition — “WE” did these things because WE worked together. Some brought math, some biology, some chemistry or physics.
But no single person could ever have landed on the moon by him/herself.
Your situation is not a linear march towards decrepitude and the grave. Unless we are ALL stepping in time to that same march — and in a sense we are. But there are other layers of music playing . . . choruses that repeat and play counterpoint upon one another. Sometimes these sequences build into a crescendo of magnificence — like that lunar landing or the simultaneous SpaceX rocket triumph.
But it’s rarely smooth sailing.
The incredible events of Apollo XIII show us what happens when folks pull TOGETHER in the face of adversity:
Despite the awesome line, failure was an option — but it was NOT nor IS the ONLY option.
Plans rarely execute perfectly.
Disasters do happen — but so do amazing successes.
“We” can accomplish things that “I” cannot.
Life is only linear from an individual perspective and a very narrow and literal point of view.
Considered in a different way, life is also cyclical and recursive — and eternal.
Regardless of one’s religious beliefs:
“The cosmos is also within us — we are made of star stuff.”
“We are all connected to each other biologically. To the Earth, chemically. To the rest of the Universe, atomically.”
“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.”
“It’s all really, really there. But you have to stop and think about it.”
Sometimes it can be helpful to consider things from alternate perspectives — like from outer space — or the bottom of the sea.
Now, please allow me to flip the script on you. Once surrounded on all sides by an atmosphere that will quite literally kill you, there is not much real difference between outer space and the the depths of the ocean.
I suppose the same could be said for metaphorical pressure as well.
“We” first traveled to the bottom of the sea (and came back alive) in 1960. This story is not nearly as well known as the tales of space exploration . . . but in some ways it is just as inspirational:
It can be just as difficult to travel beneath (or to look inward) as it is to reach the moon — or Mars — or the stars.
“They waited for the end and it didn’t come. But they were so close to the bottom and since they weren’t dead, they decided to keep going. That was the heroic moment.”
“ A taste for the unknown.” Indeed, such is required for those seeking contentment on any journey —inwards or otherwise.
“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
And vice-versa . . .
I suppose.
A beautiful song by Stephen Sondheim, illustrating in part my perspective. Here sung by the incomparable Bernadette Peters:
