To the Moon and Back

I'll start with something you probably didn't know about me: I applied to be an astronaut. The general application was open to the public. I put down my applicable experience as "none", my reference was the friend sitting next to me, and my available date as "two years from now, once I finish undergrad."

I've yet to hear from NASA.

But this small setback hasn't lessened my curiosity about what it'd be like, to hear the countdown, "3....2.....1.......LIFTOFF." And the solid thwump of g forces you'd feel on every Cm^2 of your body as you'd race toward the stars...and when that pressure's lifted...the feeling of no pressure at all: zero gravity.

And what about the Earth? What would that look like? Seeing NYC at night as a complex bright dot on a large piece of relatively dark earth. A tropical storm system making its way toward the Philippines. Earth as a blue-green spinning sphere surrounded by nothing in every direction.

What if all the humans gathered at one spot. How big would it be?

Rusty Schwolzkart was a person who did hear back from NASA, and they responded with great news. He was going to space. He felt the thrust backward into his seat. its release, weightlessness; and he saw what I've craved.

Trying to limn the experience with words, he wrote: You look down there and you can't imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross, again and again and again, and you don't even see them. There you are -- hundreds of people in the Middle East killing each other over some imaginary line that you're not even aware of, that you can't see. And from where you see it, the thing is a whole, the earth is a whole, and it's so beautiful. You wish you could take a person in each hand, one from each side in the various conflicts, and say, ‘Look. Look at it from this perspective. Look at that. What's important?'

I'm writing these words from Moldova, a country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, the fifth country I've visited in as many years. "What's important?" I ask myself this each time the plane touches down somewhere new. And the more I see, the what's important doesn't really change from place to place. Everyone seems to be dealing with the same problems, it's just each culture seems to be going at it in their own way. How to find self fulfillment. How to care for others. What constitutes truth, meaning, import. How to devote your time toward those things. And when these things clash between two philosophies/cultures/personal opinions, we get those disagreements Mr. Schwolzkart wishes he could let us put in perspective with, and against the backdrop of, our seamless, border-less home.

Perhaps those differences we perceive would turn, and we'd all have a new shared lowest common denominator for what makes us human. Peace would (hopefully) shoot up societies' immediate concerns, as would cultural understanding; short- and long-term sustainable lifestyles. Some of these reflect Peace Corps' aims and goals, and are what I'll strive to incorporate into the lives I'll touch these next two years, two months, and day.