From wandering to wondering

On April 1st, four humans climbed into a spacecraft called Integrity - NASA’s Artemis II mission - sat on top of the most powerful rocket ever built, and launched themselves into the cosmos. Commander Reid Wiseman, Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, and pilot Victor Glover together covered 695,000 miles over ten days, further from Earth than any human in over fifty years.

At one point, passing behind the lunar surface, all radio contact cut out. Forty minutes of silence while the world held its breath. And on Easter Sunday, beamed back to Earth on a live satellite broadcast, Glover and his colleagues looked back in awe at a small blue marble suspended in nothing.

“Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we’re doing is special, but we’re the same distance from you,” he shared.

“And I’m trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special. In all of 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.”

Ten days in the void is certainly one way to find a worldly perspective. After splashdown, reflecting on what the mission had meant, the crew put it simply: we are so small and powerless as humans, but yet so powerful together.

We spend a lot of energy chasing the extraordinary — the milestone, the breakthrough, the thing that will finally make it all feel worth it. And in doing so, we can easily lose our sensitivity to the oasis we’re already standing in.

It reminds us of a piece from poet William Martin, and his reflections on raising children not to just strive for extraordinary lives, but to find the wonder already in front of them:

Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

Wonder isn’t reserved for serendipity or once-in-a-generation moments. It’s also found by shifting the angle slightly on what’s already there.

The variety of colours in a garden as autumn turns. The way the ground smells after a downpour. A pet who somehow always knows what you’re feeling before you do. The way a song you haven’t heard in years brings a whole decade flooding back in seconds.

Kids know this instinctively. Babies especially - every taste, sight, sound, smell and texture arrives with full force because nothing has been filed away as unremarkable yet. And somewhere between there and here, life picks up pace and we stop noticing these little details.

So maybe today, be an astronaut for a few minutes.

Zoom out, see yourself on an oasis spinning through space with eight billion others on a floating rock. It’s kinda wild, right? Then zoom back in and find one ordinary thing hiding in plain sight. That’s usually where wonder starts.

As Victor Glover reminded us from 695,000 miles away:

“This is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing. And that we’ve got to get through this together.”

Just In Case You Missed It

We're excited to be heading to the Sorrento Writers Festival this weekend, and while today's session, On Business and Leadership, is now sold out, there are still limited tickets available for Sunday!

Catch Ben in conversation with Libbi Gorr on Sunday April 26th, 3.00pm at the Sorrento Community Centre 👇