https://youtu.be/g-jlQaYKN9M
This is a clip from the movie First Man which chronicles the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong in the years before he becomes the first man to walk on the moon. I saw it this weekend and this is one of the scenes that stuck with me because this is how I felt Saturday morning.
Spinning. Wildly. Uncontrollably. Completely untethered.
That’s a thing for me. I hate feeling out-of-control. And I hate it even more when the world feels like it’s lost its mooring.
Another mass shooting. An antisemitic hate crime. After a week of pipe-bomb mailings. When will it end?
All of my teachers and just about every spiritual book out there drives home the fact that “We cannot control the uncontrollable. We can only control our response.” Well, I want to go on record as saying that seems like the suckiest of all arrangements—and I’d like to speak to the manager.
If you’re too squeamish to watch the clip (and I don’t blame you) here’s what happens. It’s the 60’s. The infancy of our burgeoning space program. Gemini 8 is practicing docking with another vehicle in space. This is the dry-run these guys need to be able to leave the command module while it orbits the moon, go down to the surface, run around and gather rocks, and then re-dock with it and come back to earth. Piece of cake, right?
All goes well—until it doesn’t. You have to remember, all of this is unprecedented. It’s never been seen or done before.
Unprecedented. I know that word gets overused these days but I’m being deliberate when I use it here. Because when we’re observing things at a level we’ve never seen before—it feels pretty freaking out-of-control.
Okay, so our heroes have docked, and unexpectedly, the whole thing starts to spin. Like a carnival ride gone ape-shit. The revolutions (over 250 per minute) make it next to impossible to problem solve, let alone stay conscious.
And that’s the key.
Caught in this runaway spin cycle, these men have to maintain consciousness (through training and breathing) in order to gain control of an uncontrollable situation.
And that’s when it hit me!
Wait. Just. A. Minute. Here. (Insert foehead slap) I may be able to stop my own spinning! I have the training! I know about the breath and how it can calm down the “fight, flight or freeze” reaction my body has when everything seems out of control. The part I struggle with is staying conscious. And by conscious, I mean awake. Present. In the moment.
Just like those astronauts, a part of me wants to close my eyes and go to sleep. To slip away.
I want NASA, or Glennon Doyle, or somebody else much smarter than me to figure this shit out. I’m too busy spinning to be of any help, right? But I can’t, WE can’t lose consciousness. Not right now, it’s too important to stay awake. To breathe and remember our training.
We may not be able to stop the spin entirely, but we can’t slow it down at all—not if we go to sleep.
We can do hard things you guys. We trained for this. Let’s stay awake.
Carry on,
xox
