Can we have a cosmic perspective?
Space exploration is a constant source of inspiration to me. The speeches of Gene Kranz, former Flight Director of NASA never fail to get me thinking. The Apollo missions of the Sixties and Seventies are full of stories of human endeavour – of success and of failure too.
But recently I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the words of Edgar Mitchell, the Lunar Module pilot of Apollo 14. He was a key NASA astronaut whose endeavours not only made him the sixth person to walk on the moon but also a key member of the operations team who worked on the Apollo 13 crisis plan. He was awarded the Presidential medal of freedom for his ability to adapt altitude when flying the Lunar module with a failed Apollo Service module attached so was clearly a great strategic thinker when faced with such a huge challenge. But whilst in Space, it was Mitchell’s fresh perspective on life back home that influenced the rest of his life.
Whilst on the surface of the moon, Mitchell looked back at the Earth. This is of course not an unusual thing to do. Many astronauts have commented on the fragility of Earth as seen from Space. But Mitchell felt a deep sense of what I like to call “Cosmic Perspective”. A sense of what really matters about life on Earth. Talking of the experience Mitchell said:
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a b****’ "”
I guess in a nutshell, what Mitchell found was a sense of what really matters. Whilst his life wasn’t without controversy (his beliefs about visitors from other planets has been a constant source of media attention and one NASA have distanced themselves from!) he focused on practices such as yoga and meditation for healing, both physically and mentally. He co-founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences that explored many elements of the para psychological. When criticised he stood firm in his belief that science should explore new territories, a sure link back to his career in Space
But Mitchell’s post-NASA work isn’t what gets me thinking. Instead how are we to get this perspective on what really matters without the ability to orbit the globe!? We are busy. So busy. Always busy. We work more hours at a laptop than ever before. We believe the world is a smaller place through social media and the internet, but yet we all tend to keep on running on the treadmill without taking enough time to stop and think
So that’s my first thought. We need to not just slow down but actually stop from time to time and think about what it is we are doing. And even more importantly why? I don’t think we do this enough. Look at stats on dual-screening – even when we relax we multi-task! So, scheduling some time to stop and just think about life can help with perspective.
But unlike an astronaut we don’t have to do this alone. The more we hear from others the wider our thinking becomes. And for this to be truly meaningful we need to hear from people who aren’t like us. Consider how to expand your social circles (virtual and physical) and widen your choice of media. Our brains look for confirmation on things we already believe, so we have to work really hard to change our own thinking. This might even go as far as widening your choice of media sites and news sources to see global issues through a brand-new lens.
The biggest change in perspective for astronauts was the visual representation of how small we all are. The Earth is just one planet in a huge galaxy, and there are billions of people on Earth. What do we want our individual legacies to be? How can we make a difference to those around us and the planet we live on? We can become so overly focused on particular events or moments and it can ground us to remember the insignificance they have in the grand scheme of life on Earth!
I don’t have the answers on cosmic perspective, but I find it fascinating. The Apollo missions were designed to be a triumph of science, yet they inspire in a much broader sense. Mitchell and many others found themselves thinking differently as a result of gaining some distance from their life on Earth, and I believe this is something we can all learn from.
