"That's one small step for man...one giant leap for mankind."
- Neil Armstrong
Forty years ago Monday night, man first walked on the moon. Unless you were alive to witness it, that sentence is one whose magnificence is somewhat lost on many as just another historical fact, just another piece of trivia or bullet point in a Wikipedia entry when you type in "Neil Armstrong."
So just consider it for a moment.
Man walked on the moon.
Human beings found a way to traverse the lifeless vacuum of space to our dusty celestial companion and return home again. For all the science fiction about space travel and whatnot, we actually did it. When you look up in the sky tonight, think about it. Look at the moon and think about the fact that Americans were actually there.
To me, when I consider America's greatest achievement in our 230-plus years, it's the night of June 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong's sojourn down the steps of the Eagle to the surface of the moon, the culmination of the work and sacrifice of thousands, was a truly -- without any hint of irony or cynicism -- unifying moment in the history of our planet. For a few fleeting moments in time, human beings the world over watched in wonder as one of their own stepped foot on a different world.
My favorite quote about the Apollo 11 landing comes from the movie Apollo 13, as Jim Lovell contemplates the achievement.
"We now live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It's not a miracle. We just decided to go."
And that sums it up. "We just decided to go." The dream realized when Armstrong and Aldrin descended those steps shows how we really can do ANYTHING that we set our minds to. No objective is beyond our grasp if we have the desire and drive to work together and sacrifice and face the challenges along the way. If we truly want it, we can do it. President Kennedy issued a challenge in 1961 to do something that at that moment in time, we were not capable of doing. The technology and know-how didn't even EXIST yet. But in nine years of collective effort, we did the impossible when our astronauts not only set foot on the moon, but more importantly, returned home and set foot again on the Earth.
Argue the political realities about the moon landing being a product of Cold War politics another time, that sure, we can go to the moon if all those resources are thrown behind it. It doesn't change the fact that we accomplished the feat. And because of it, no dream is beyond us.
And that's my most important point. That landing is an affirmation for me of American ingenuity, ambition, cooperation and spirit. It's one of the things I point out to my kids about our potential as a nation. War, poverty, education, health care, the failing economy -- none of it is indomitable if we decide it's not.
If we just decide to go...
