Latest / From Chad / Startling #1145

Transcript

Startling #1145 · From Chad

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  These are the real wonders of the world.
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  There's a story behind that. This is your daily message from
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  Chad #1145 to upgrade your mental game today by telling
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  yourself a better story. Because the most important story
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  you hear is the story you tell yourself.
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  This message is dedicated to Kayla Moon in celebration of her
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  birthday. You can get a free copy of my
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  book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to from
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  chad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message
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  and hundreds of others are always available at
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  www.fromchad.com. Here's the upgrade.
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  You think the wonders of the world are things you visit, but
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  upgraded thinking knows the real wonder of the world is the one
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  looking at them. Here's the story.
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  In June 1995, Maya Angelou stood in San Francisco at the 50th
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  anniversary of the United Nations, the same city where the
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  UN Charter was signed. It was only the second time in
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  her life she had been asked to write for a moment this size, 2
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  years before she read at a presidential inauguration.
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  She wrote a new poem for the occasion, titled A Brave and
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  Startling Truth, and in it she calls Earth small and lonely,
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  drifting through space, past stars that don't notice us, a
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  speck of dust, a drift among indifferent Suns.
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  That description didn't come out of nowhere.
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  It came from 50 years of humanity slowly learning just
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  how small we actually are. It started October 24th, 1946,
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  when scientists strapped a movie camera into the nose of a
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  captured German V2 rocket in the New Mexico desert.
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  It climbed 65 miles up, snapped A-frame every second and a half,
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  and then slammed back into the sand.
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  The camera was destroyed, but the film survived and for the
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  first time, humans saw the curve of their own planet.
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  It would be another 20 years in 1967 before a satellite camera
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  would capture the first full photograph of the whole Earth
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  hanging complete and round against black space.
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  A year later, during the Apollo 8 mission, 3 astronauts were
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  circling the moon on Christmas Eve 1968 with cameras pointed at
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  craters when the capsule rolled and Earth rose over the horizon,
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  blue and alone. In 1972, Apollo 17 turned the
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  camera back one last time on the way to the moon and caught the
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  whole lit Earth in a single frame, still the most reproduced
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  photograph ever taken. Then on Valentine's Day 1990,
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  Voyager 1 was 3.7 billion miles out beyond Neptune, done
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  photographing planets. NASA was about to power down the
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  cameras to conserve energy as Voyager headed out of our solar
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  system. Carl Sagan asked NASA to turn
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  the camera around one more time before it shut off forever.
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  They did. The Earth showed up as a single
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  pixel of light caught inside a stray sunbeam.
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  Sagan spent the next four years writing about that little pixel
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  in his book Pale Blue dot. Everyone whoever lived, he said,
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  lived their whole life on that dot.
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  A year later, Angelou stepped to the podium in San Francisco with
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  all of this behind her. The grainy rocket photo, the
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  full disc. The Earthrise.
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  The blue marble, the pale dot. Every image had said the same
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  thing. We're small.
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  We're out here alone. We're easy to miss.
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  She took that same small speck and turned it inside out.
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  Not small like insignificant. Small like Precious.
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  She named the pyramids, the Great Canyon, the Danube, Mount
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  Fuji. The wonders we've always pointed
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  to and said none of them are the real one.
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  We are capable of cruelty that can stab a heart and capable of
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  singing songs that can stop the heart.
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  That contradiction isn't a flaw, it's the miracle.
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  The better story to tell yourself is I will live like the
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  wonder of the world I am. It's easy to get mired in the
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  mundane and loose touch with the miracle of the journey.
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  It's startling when you stop and consider it. 50 years of cameras
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  pointed at Earth and it took a poet to tell us what we were
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  actually looking at. I read this poem back in episode
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  387 titled More That Unites. If you'd like to hear the poem
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  is stuck with me, then it still does tell me a story of Wonder
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  of Humanity to from chadsmith@gmail.com.
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  Send someone a text and tell them you're a wonder of the
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  world.