Dear Friend,
I did not expect NASA to emotionally take me out this week, and yet here we are.
It started innocently enough. One video. Then another. Then suddenly my entire algorithm decided I was a deeply committed space enthusiast, and now I know more about the Artemis II mission than I do about several people in my own life. I have watched so many astronaut interviews that if you asked me to suit up, I would at least feel spiritually prepared.
And somewhere along the way, I started crying.
Not a full-on breakdown. We are not in public meltdown territory. But a steady, surprising welling up.
There is something about this mission that feels different.
Yes, there are the obvious things. The scale of it. The fact that human beings are once again preparing to travel farther than we have ever gone, but this time, in our generation. The fact that there are still firsts unfolding in real time. Christina Koch becoming the first woman assigned to a mission to the Moon. Victor Glover becoming the first Black astronaut to travel there. Jeremy Hansen becoming the first non-American (he’s Canadian!) on a lunar mission.
So many kids (and adults) around the world getting to see themselves reflected in who gets to go, and feeling, maybe for the first time, that this kind of future could belong to them too.
All of it important.
But what has stayed with me is something else: the way they speak.
They are asked the same questions again and again. What does it mean to be the first. What do you hope your legacy will be. What are you most excited about. And each time, the answer moves outward.
No one centers themselves. No one claims the moment as their own. They speak about the mission, about the team, about humanity. About what it means to look back at Earth and understand, in a way most of us never will, that we are all sharing the same fragile place.
There is a steadiness in them that feels almost disorienting. A kind of perspective that doesn’t shrink the moment, but holds it inside something even larger.
And perhaps that is why it is landing the way it is.
Because we are living through a time that feels completely unsteady, to say it kindly. The noise is constant. The fractures are violent. There are forces at work that overtly benefit from keeping us separate, suspicious, divided, and at war.
So to hear someone speak, without irony or defensiveness, about unity, about shared humanity, about this small pale blue planet we are all responsible for, it feels almost radical. It feels like remembering something we forgot we knew.
In particular, Victor Glover is echoing in my chest.
Last night, far too late, I was doing that thing where you tell yourself “just-one-more-video” and then suddenly it is an hour later, and I came across a clip of him speaking from the spaceship.
And baby jesus buddah allah on high, time stopped.
From here (i.e. outer-friggin-space) “You are special, in all this emptiness. This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.”
There was no performance in it, completely off the cuff and unprepared. No sense of trying to make it sound meaningful.
It was meaningful.
And then he spoke about the timing of the mission. That it would take place over a weekend that holds meaning across traditions. Easter. Passover. And Ramadan coming to a close. (I’ve included the clip at the end, do give it a watch.)
And to boot, this year, my birthday fell into the middle of all of it. Every few years, that happens, and when it does, I feel it more. A subtle awareness that something is being mirrored across different stories at once and I ought to pay deeper attention.
Passover tells the story of leaving what confines you. Of stepping out before you feel ready. Of trusting a path that has not yet revealed itself. Easter speaks to the reality that something must end before something new can begin. That transformation often looks like loss before it looks like growth. Ramadan calls for reflection. For attention. For a turning toward something beyond the self.
Different traditions. Different language. And yet they are circling the same experience.
Crossing a threshold you cannot fully prepare for.
Leaving what is familiar. Stepping into something you cannot yet see. And trusting that something will meet you there.
Which is what brought me back, again, to Captain Victor. And the five words he said that perfectly names what happens when we reach the edge of ourselves.
