Ron Garan – Floating In Darkness
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Did you know that you can open your mind and create a whole new perspective on life? That’s what Astronaut Colonial Ron Garan knows with certainty and can show you how to fill your mind with new ideas, connections, and creative solutions.
As one of the few humans to live in space, he learned how a foundation of awe and wonder changes everything. It is the “secret sauce” that underpins our conversation about his book FLOATING IN DARKNESS. Together we deeply explore new ways to view ourselves and our societies from a different perspective that will enrich and enlighten our lives.
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Ron Garan – Floating In Darkness
How To Gain A New Perspective On Life
Do you want to fill your mind with new ideas, connections and creative solutions? Astronaut Ron Garan can show you how. As one of the few humans to live in space, he learned how a foundation filled with awe and wonder changes everything. In our conversation about his book, Floating in Darkness, we explore how anyone can develop a new perspective on life. Plus, a special thanks to my patrons who make this show possible. Thank you and enjoy our conversation.
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Ron, it is such a pleasure and honor to have you back. To see you again, my friend, is a true joy. Welcome back.
Barry, thanks for the invitation back. I've been looking forward to this for a while. Ever since we did the episode on The Orbital Perspective, I'm like, "I need to get back and talk to Barry again."
We spoke while we were testing the report out. I said, "What you did here was as is if you took The Orbital Perspective and then did a major deep dive because this is so rich and filled with an explosion of thought in regards to the depth of The Orbital Perspective."
The subtitle of the book is Floating in Darkness: A Journey of Evolution and this journey of evolution continues. I don't know how deep you want to get right off the bat. I'll hold it at that right there and then we can talk more about that.
We can't go too deep in my opinion. Don't worry about it. The truth is, you've been a man on a mission since you were young. I remember reading about your boxing and football. I remember what football meant to me and I was so relating to that aspect. We will talk in detail about your F-16 work as a Desert Storm Commander, as a Nuclear Commander in Germany of the whole fleet and then two missions in space. You start this book off with a new mission. Floating in Darkness is designed as you write to bring us all who are seeking the light of truth together. We also have to have the courage. That's the most important and difficult aspect to obtain, to peel back the layers of reality.
The purpose of the book is to be a unifying force to bring people together. That was the main motivation for writing it.
You even start with, "We are one!"
You're referring to the prologue, which is a very metaphorical and abstract part of the book. My intention for the prologue was to get people to start reading this. They probably picked it up because I'm an astronaut or maybe they heard that there was some military stuff in there or out of curiosity, not knowing what it was because it has got a pretty cool cover. They start reading the prologue. What I hope happens is people read it and say, "This is a little different. I'm not sure where this is going. It might be a little weird but you've piqued my curiosity. I want to see where the story goes." That was the objective of the prologue.
You know where it goes. It goes with you saying, "We are a species no longer confined to our planet. When you are up there at the space station, you are floating in darkness and all sorts of epiphanies. The awe and the wonder bubble up within you."
I often describe my experience as an epiphany in slow motion. I don't think there was a single time where the light was shining down from heaven and a choir of angels was singing. It was little seeds were planted here and there that, in some cases, took years to blossom. The subtitle of the book is A Journey of Evolution. The book itself is an evolution. With the language I used and the worldview I described at the beginning of the book, my philosophies and mindsets changed throughout the book. The words I used, in the beginning, are not the same words that I used at the end. I caution readers, "If you come across something that you don't agree with or that makes you feel a little uncomfortable, keep reading because it's probably going to change."
Change but in an interesting way. You do that specifically, boxing, football and F-16 pilot. Those were different tribes like we have ethnicities, nationalities and all of those things. When you're having The Orbital Perspective, even though that’s the name of your other book, Floating in Darkness, which gave you the orbital perspective. The truth is that you also say, "We don't lose those other qualities of our ethnicity, religion and things. Even if we are looking to create oneness on this planet and this feeling of unity, that doesn't mean that we lose our individuality. It makes us even stronger individually."
Our diversity gives us strength if we allow it because one of the things that diversity gives us is a diversity of perspectives. When you see a situation from different perspectives, if you see it from two perspectives, you're seeing it in stereoscopic vision. In 3D, you're starting to see the depth. The more perspectives we can apply to a situation, problem or challenge, the deeper our understanding of that problem is. It ceases to become two-dimensional and us versus them. The nuances start to bubble up.
Floating In Darkness: A Journey Of Evolution
That allows us to incorporate the total perspective into the problem-solving process and arrive at long-term, viable, effective solutions that are going to make a difference as opposed to what we're doing is living solely within our tribes, slapping band-aids on things and thinking those are our solutions. That's a critical point that you brought up. We don't have to abandon all those things that we have previously identified with. We have to see them in the context of the bigger picture and see how they fit into the bigger puzzle because there is a bigger picture. That's the incredible interdependency and interconnectivity of life itself on this planet.
You see the evolution how that evolves. Let’s go back, you cannot speak to a commander of the nuclear command in Germany, one of the head F-16 pilots of Desert Storm and an astronaut without going back to some of that evolution in the beginning. I want to go a little bit back to some of the things that touched me, even if it was part of the old tribal way because you were always looking for a path you said, either over obstacles or through obstacles. I always think of that song. I mentioned a song because of the music. I bet people had never realized how much music plays in the role of being an astronaut. I was stunned by that. Music plays a major role in the life of an astronaut.
For some reason, I was counting up the number of musical groups or composers that I listed in the book and it's over a dozen. Music is our connection back to Earth and the natural. When you're living on a space station, it's a very artificial and sterile environment. I remember the first time I was in space and I heard music playing. Somebody had a speaker set up connected to an iPod. I was working somewhere on the space station and I remember all of a sudden feeling relaxed like, "What happened? Why am I relaxed all of a sudden?" I realized that I was listening to music. The reason why it relaxed me is that it gave me a bridge back to the only world I've ever known and to the natural world through that music. There are some interesting lyrics in the book that I used as a literary tool. There's music throughout the book to set the stage for certain scenes in the book.
There was one that I was waiting to see. You can't help it when you're reading this. You overcame so many obstacles to get to where you are. I thought of music. I was thinking of OAR's music where they go, "We go under. We go around. We go over. We'll go through." That's almost words that you specifically state. That's what reminded me of it. I bet you had heard it because you mentioned him, Tom Petty. I thought for sure you would need the waiting because waiting is the hardest part. That seems like almost what you do more than anything as an F-16 pilot and aquanaut because you practice a lot of being an astronaut under the sea. As an astronaut, much of the time is spent waiting.
The song that you brought up in the book is Tom Petty's Free Fallin'. There's a scene in the book where my five crewmates and I on the space station from three different countries are relaxing at dinner. We have a speaker set up with an iPod going and Tom Petty's Free Fallin' is playing. We are all literally free-falling. The entire space station is free-falling back to Earth. I look over at Sergey Volkov, a Russian cosmonaut. He is laid out with his arms up and back arched like a free-falling skydiver. The conversation that we were having was so poignant. It wasn't just the words that were being said. Everything was part of this poignant moment that was captured in the book that leads to the nature of reality, our place on the planet and in the universe. It was a sublime experience and music was a part of it.
When you say our place in the universe, the evolutionary thought that goes through it is, "We at one time are so small within this cosmic interstellar universe and at the same time relevant and important." That is something you make us aware of throughout all stages of your own growth through this book is, "Our part and parcel of this game as well as it being massive."
One of the main tenets of the book is that we are much more powerful and we have so much more impact on things, especially on the future than we could possibly imagine. It's an awe-inspiring thought but it's also a sobering thought because with that comes a lot of responsibility. Throughout the book, I'm touching on various explanations of why I'm making that point that we are incredibly powerful. There are a lot of people that are somewhat reluctant to make a difference in the world because they think, "What can one person possibly do to make a difference?" I go into a lot of depth and spend a lot of time talking about how powerful each and every one of us is and how to leave a true legacy, not the legacy that the world teaches us as important. A legacy that will not rust, fade away and grow exponentially over time versus what we do. A real legacy, not one that we tend to strive for that's impermanent.
The legacy we're going to get into it because when you describe even legacy and how the effect we have on our communities, ourselves, planet and universe, we'll drill deep. In the very beginning, you captured our attention with "coincidences." I am a collector of stories of coincidences because I love them. One of our favorite shows to watch is NCIS and Gibbs. The lead character played by Mark Harmon says, "There are no coincidences." I tend to sometimes think there are no coincidences. In that realm, something occurs to you as you're deciding to become an amazing astronaut. For instance, are you the only man on this Earth who crashed an F-16 two days in a row?
To be clear, I didn't crash the second time.
I'm sorry. I mean who will have to make a forced landing. Let's leave it at that.
On the first day, I ejected less than a second before I would have not survived. The next day, I had to do a forced landing to make a long story short. I'm pretty sure I'm the only astronaut who had to do that.
At first, you think, "How is this guy going to even become an astronaut?" You realize they investigated you with a microscope and you were not at fault in these cases but at the same time, there are things that I found such a contradiction. As much as you wanted to be an astronaut because of your experience in the Air Force and also some weird situations with your physical health, it was almost impossible for you to even become an astronaut. He was told by so many people, "Do not even bother trying."
There were probably at least four things that would require a miracle to overcome in order to become an astronaut. You mentioned a couple of here.
Share a little bit about that because I don't think people could even comprehend that. How could an F-16 Air Force pilot not be at least up for being an astronaut? It didn't make sense to me until I read the book and then I saw why. At first, it would seem a good example. Too many years of experience in the Air Force, that would seem odd.
Perspective On Life: If you come across something that you don’t agree with or that makes you a little uncomfortable, keep reading because it will probably change you.
In order to take the path that I was on, I needed to go to test pilot school. To go to test pilot school, I had to have the right degrees. Not only did I not have the right degrees to go to test pilot school, but I also did not have the right degrees to become an astronaut, either. At an advanced age, working ungodly hours and raising a family, I had to go out and get some advanced degrees that were completely outside of my field of experience. On top of that, even if I had those degrees, I had too many years in the Air Force to qualify to go to test pilot school. I would need a waiver.
What I was told was the longest waiver they had ever given was three months and I needed a three-year waiver. They said, "First of all, you're not qualified because you don't have the right degrees." Second of all, I had too many years in service at that point. I said, "It's their right not to choose me to go to test pilot school, but it's my right to apply anyway." I applied several times and did end up getting selected and getting the three-year waiver. I was also medically disqualified, had the wrong background and was too old. I didn't go to test pilot school. It was a ridiculous obstacle after a ridiculous obstacle that had to be overcome.
I talked about this in the book. When I set out to become an astronaut to give it my all, I didn't expect that I would be successful. What I wanted to avoid is being the grumpy old man who looks back on his life in the twilight years and wonders what would have happened if I had given it all to pursue my dream of becoming an astronaut. I wanted to be able to say, "I didn't make it but I truly believe that I did everything I could possibly do. It wasn't in the cards. It was beyond my control." In this case, it worked out. I shouldn't say I didn't expect it, but I knew that it was going to be a long shot is because of all those miracles that were beyond my control that had to occur in order for me to be accepted. I needed to be medically qualified, get this waiver that has never been granted before and a Master's degree in a subject that I don't even have a Bachelor's degree in. The list goes on of all these things that I had to do.
Even when you talked about Physics, we all know that randomness is 99.9% of everything that happens anyway that we have to fight that randomness is persistence. How many times are you going to swing that bat? That's one thing. Persistence is an underlying theme. It's not something you talk about too much, but as far as watching your life unfold, persistence is a key message throughout this book. It was that sense of purpose and mission. That breeds persistence because when you have that sense of mission, you'll do everything humanly possible to keep it alive.
I felt that I was on the path that I was supposed to be on while I was going through that.
We talked about the vastness and how small we feel, and yet at the same time, how important we are. This goes through the mission of the book to show us our importance. At the same time, you want to try to get a grasp and want us to get a grasp on why is it that in our society to function, we are continuously not keying on all the miracles that do occur every day and all we focus on are the terrible things that seemed to not happen even that often. The miracles around us, if you're willing to observe them properly, they're almost a moment-to-moment happening and yet our society is focused so much on the trivial rather than the miraculous.
There are two things there. One is and I described this early in the book about how we all put ourselves in a small limiting subset of reality in order to function, do our daily commutes, pay our bills and do all the things that we need to do. That's one part of it. The other part of it as you brought up is our tendency to focus on the negative. That's because we're bombarded with that constantly day after day. With our 24/7 news cycle, that does pretty much not much more than tell us all the bad news that's happening because that's what sells newspapers, brings people to online news agencies and draws us in.
It probably has something to do with the amygdala or something but that doesn't show the complete picture. The complete picture is that it's much more balanced. There's good happening and there is a bigger world out there than we normally keep in our day-to-day awareness. One of the analogies I use is talking about the Greek philosopher Plato's story about the allegory of the cave. There were these guys who were chained inside a cave and they had been there their whole life. They knew nothing outside. They had no desire to leave the cave because they didn't know of a better life outside the cave. They got very comfortable there.
There was a fire behind them. It was casting shadows on the cave wall and the sounds from behind them echoed off the walls, leading them to believe that the shadows were making these sounds. That was their reality. They worked hard to classify the shadows on the cave wall and felt very comfortable with it. One day, one of the prisoners escaped and saw that there was a world outside the cave that was superior in every way to the dark place with the shadows. The shadows weren't real. They were reflections of the true reality that was outside the cave wall. They didn't want to leave and believe him when he tried at a symphony to go back and explain to them.
We get so comfortable in our perspectives, opinions and worldviews that anything that challenges that is seen as a threat. Even if it's something that will broaden that and make life better, it's seen as a threat because we've worked hard to classify those shadows on the cave wall. There's a lot in the book about breaking down those barriers and walls that we've built around ourselves that close us in from the greater, larger and superior in every way reality that surrounds us constantly.
This is what you want to send home is there's no doubt that when you are shot up into space. We will talk about some of the specifics of that but first, let's go to the big picture. You see the Earthrise. You want to send home that an astronaut's perspective would automatically be different but you want us to know that we have that same ability to feel that Earthrise experience, even if we're not shot up into space.
That started with The Orbital Perspective. The main tenet of The Orbital Perspective is you don't have to be in orbit to have the orbital perspective. That's why I included in that book so many stories of people who exhibited the orbital perspective without ever having gone to space. That's the main tenet of Floating in Darkness, too. There is absolutely no requirement to go to space to realize any of the truths that are illuminated in the book.
There's some fun stuff in there I want to share with readers as well. Everything from trying to take a pill to try to sleep, people don't realize when you're used to laying down your head and it's a pillow. It's very hard when you can't do that. You're floating up constantly. Tell us a little bit about that feeling because when you read it, all I kept saying was, "Even if I don't want to go into space, I want to feel that."
It is a euphoric feeling to be weightless. It took me about a month to figure out how to fall asleep in space, which is unfortunate because my first mission was two weeks long. I didn't get too much sleep on that first mission. We're used to gravity pushing us into a comfy bed and our heads gently down into a comfy pillow. There is no gravity to push you into anything. You're floating. Where my head would naturally go as I relaxed was uncomfortable for me. I don't know after weeks up there if the tendons on my neck stretched but eventually, it was not an issue. It's a great sleep because you're not tossing and turning because of pressure points that occur throughout the night.
Perspective On Life: We are so comfortable in our worldview that anything that challenges it is seen as a threat, even if it will broaden that and make life better.
You did something at least in the Kindle edition of Floating in Darkness and I'm going to guess it's in the print edition. For some reason, there are almost whole paragraphs when you are probing your own consciousness and they're in italics. Did you do that on purpose? Was that only in one edition? There are whole paragraphs specifically done when you are probing the depths of consciousness that one would expect to see in a philosophy book, not just a biographical and metaphysical book like this. I'm thinking these things now. I'll give you a perfect example is when you realize that you have this one day to live, this thought comes to your mind. You break it then down into how many nows has one have. There's something about that. I was going to read the whole paragraph but I figured we'll save it for the readers. Share that moment because that was powerful.
Going back to the stylistic points, anytime I'm thinking to myself style-wise, we put that in italics. What you're talking about is in a scene where it's a dream on the space station. We don't have time to get into the entire dream. Part of the dream, I'm pondering the meaning of time, "What is time? Is time an arrow that has a series of successive nows in them? If so, how long does a now last?" What the conclusion of that was that there's a vertical dimension to time. There is what we understand through our finite minds as the linear arrow of time that's going from the past through the present to the future but there's another dimension to that I call a vertical dimension where there's depth, height and it's not finite. That is tied later in the book to our underlying unity because it all comes full circle.
In a sense, by breaking down the now the way you do, we don't even reach a moment of death.
We become immortal.
You talked about legacy. It's not so much what you leave behind. It's that you never really leave. There's truth to that. I'm going to use your own words. This is another one of those. Sometimes it was hard for me because I was into the philosophy to determine, whether this is the dream or is it Ron thinking this awake. It doesn't matter to me. I didn't care. It was too great of a thought. This is what you wrote, "Could the now be a perpendicular doorway between the finite linear time we know and the infinite exponential existence that is beyond our perception?" I want to focus on that a little bit because very few people talk about that notion of, "Beyond our own perception, there is us still there. We are leaving this mark and trail almost like a comet's tail that will never go away. No matter who remembers it, we leave this mark."
Tying that to legacy as we talked, the world teaches us that to leave a legacy, you have to be some great person where they build my name and surname universities after you. Every great statesman, poet, movie store, top-notch and world-famous celebrity will be forgotten. At best, you're going to be a historical footnote that eventually will mean nothing, even the physical things we create. Every great cathedral and pyramid will eventually be brought to dust but there is a legacy that not only doesn't fade and isn't impermanent but increases exponentially.
The difference between where our world would be and will be if you had not lived is unbelievable. Every thought, action, word and single thing we do every moment of every day ripples out exponentially and changes the course not only of our own lives but of society and civilization. One of the examples I used in the book is a giant asteroid coming towards the Earth. It's so big that if it hit the Earth, it would destroy all life on Earth. If we knew about it soon enough, we wouldn't have to send a whole big team of people to blow it out of the sky.
We could send a small spacecraft with the force equivalent to the weight of a feather, given a slight little nudge. That little nudge over the course of the entire trajectory to Earth could lead to thousands of miles of miss distance saving every living thing on the planet. Everything that we do is a little nudge, either positive or negative so the trajectory of our civilization. Going back to the thing about time is what I'm trying to describe is the light that's streaming in from the cave entrance. There is a bigger world out there than we normally perceive. Every once in a while, we get glimpses into that. That was my attempt to share a glimpse into that world outside of the cave.
For us to realize it, all it requires is our little nudges. We don't need anything more than that little tap. If you take that little tap like the trajectory, that's another thing. When you're traveling hundreds of thousands of miles into space, you're going to land into a space station. We're now talking about inches. Whatever happens here on this planet, you talk about a ripple effect when it comes to the trajectory of the world, the universe and our lives. That ripple effect needs the nudge and you can be millions of miles off and then nudge it back. You can take that 100,000 miles to that 3-inch space that you need to fit the rocket into the International Space Station.
When we're talking about things like understanding reality, it's not even that, "It's just a small, little nudge." It's less than a nudge. It takes effort from me. All we have to do is get out of our own way. The effort is in keeping up the walls that separate us from those truths. If we're able to get out of our own way, which throughout the book I defined as our ego, then a lot of these things naturally become apparent.
You are so attuned to the fact that getting out of our own way is way harder than getting out of the way of an asteroid or anything else. That's the puzzle that I'm always struggling with is getting out of my own way.
That's what everybody struggles with.
That's what I mean. Getting out of our own way is the universal element that we struggle with.
One of the things that going to space did do and it does this for almost everybody who goes to space is it makes you realize that a lot of the things that we think are so important, fight and quarrel over blur into insignificance from that vantage point. Part of the equation of being able to get out of our own way is to realize that 99% and a whole bunch of 9’s after that percent of the things that we worry about, we don't need to be worrying about.
Perspective On Life: Every single thought, action, word, or thing we do every moment of every day ripples out exponentially. It changes the course not only of our lives but of society and civilization.
You give us something in the book that I want to play off of that thought exactly. It is another way to get out of our way and this is what you were able to do. I believe this is why we want all of us to experience this. I'm going to use your exact words, "Immersed in complete awe and wonder, I am also filled with gratitude. I think if you fill your life with awe, wonder and gratitude, I am convinced you will get out of your way."
One of the things because some people reading this might think, "What on wonder do I have?" A lot of being immersed in on wonder is simply opening your eyes to the on wonder that surrounds us constantly. The very fact that you took a breath and you're here is a miracle. If we added up all the probabilities that you would be you, we come to the mathematical certainty that you are a miracle of incomprehensible proportions the fact that you're here. Here's the other side of that coin and that applies to everyone else, the person who flips you off in traffic, the troll on the internet and the person who doesn't agree with your political views. Every single person you meet is also a perfect miracle. That's a foundational and mathematical truth with mathematical certainty that we need to take into our everyday Calculus.
As you say it even, all of a sudden my shoulders dropped with everything else. It's funny. The deeper you get, most people get a little tense when that happens. The truth is when you do experience that feeling as we talked about awe, gratitude and wonder, you can take a deeper breath. You don't have to feel so uptight because you realize it's that weird dichotomy that we're small, insignificant, large and important. When you come to terms with that, you can relax about it. You also tell us, "We, ourselves are not from Earth. We are of Earth." You used those words and that's another soothing little mantra that we need to play over in our head. We are a part of this universe and world. Don't be afraid of that. Rest in comfort with it and be grateful for it.
Say that 100 years from now, we have a spacecraft with one astronaut on it that flies 75,000 light-years away. The radius of the Earth became 75,000 light-years because that's not somebody from Earth that's out there. I used that line which was not my line. I've heard that many times from many different people that, "We're not from Earth. We're of Earth." I juxtapose that thought and mindset, which I had on my first mission with a thought I had on my second mission, which is, "We're not in the universe. We're of the universe." You get that same thread. There's a scene where I do talk about some music and lyrics. It's on the launchpad in Kazakhstan where I go much deeper into what I mean by that.
Is that the U2 song? I don't mind you doing a little bit of it. I must tell you this. You almost recite the song in its entirety but when you do hear, "One love, one blood, one life," I find it correct. Maybe I'm almost positive this is where it was. It was when you entered the Soyuz capsule when you were going to go up in space with the Russians. You realized at one time you were a fighter pilot, guarding Europe against the Soviets and now you are brothers flying together. There was a flag, both the American flag and the Soviet flag. I remember you talking about that U2 song. You include the lyrics in it and tie those lyrics into the emotions that you're going through.
I did feel and I don't think it was just me but I felt that we were embarking on a mission of unity for all of humanity because of what you said. We had former Cold War Warriors that had beaten swords into plowshares, whatever that saying is. I'm lying on my back in the spacecraft, getting ready to launch. The song One comes over our headsets because each of us was asked to pick a few songs that the Russian launch personnel could pipe into our spacecraft during the times of relative boarding. One was one of the songs that I picked because of its message of unity. As I'm lying there, this certainty of beauty was washing over me and I understood why the words were beautiful. They represent unity which is a beautiful concept but I couldn't understand why the underlying melody was so beautiful.
In this scene in the book, I dissect what's happening with the underlying music. It concludes with that juxtaposition between, "We're not from the Earth. We're of the Earth with we're not in the universe. We're of the universe. What does it mean to be of the universe?" I take it one step further and I say, "We are the universe." That's all related to the song, which I have permission from U2 to use the lyrics that I did use in that passage. When I read the book and I don't know how many times I've read it now, that's one of the most moving parts of the book for me is when I read that passage because it rings so true. There's a powerful truth in there that if you're on the same wavelength, it's going to ring true for you. I'm laughing because the whole passage is about wavelength. "What is music? It's a sign wave. What is an individual note?" The beauty does not come from the individual note. What connects the notes is where the beauty comes from, which has a lot of applications for our life here.
I decided to use the name Between The Lines for the show and PBS series because I'll never forget being on a train in Germany. I was sitting next to a composer who was a classical pianist. He was going to one of these Deutsche Grammophon. I remember that. It was a concert that they were putting on that was going to be the most classical concert there was. He was a professor of Music at New Paltz University in New York. I said, "Professor, you're playing classical music. Why is Vladimir Horowitz when he is playing classical music so famous? I didn't want to offend or anything but I've never heard of you. What is the difference? You're playing the same notes." He said, "It's what's between those notes and frequencies that we see the awe and wonder."
There's a part of that translates to this other element. That is, you talk a lot about the kindness that we need to show to others. When you're kind to others, it's not something you have to think of as an altruistic thing. This is the example used, "As if you would pull your hand away from touching a hot stove. Being altruistic is a sense of, in the truest way, it's a beautiful form of selfishness. It's because you are by being of giving, you are receiving."
Maybe a different way to look at it is not as selflessness but you're expanding your definition of the word self. Like at the end of the book, I expand my definition of the word home. I say, "If we expand our definition of the word home to include the entire planet, it doesn't come with a requirement to forget where we came from our national, cultural, religious or ethnic identity is. It simply means seeing those things in the context of the bigger picture." If we expand our definition of the word self to include more than just what's inside the skin right here and equate it with all of humanity, all life on Earth or better yet, in the universe, we do that without losing our own personal identity. We could become something bigger.
The other point of the book is, "There is no them. There is only us. The word them is not a real word." When we're being altruistic to some person or creature, we're not necessarily in the true sense of the word being any more altruistic to our hand when we pull it back from a hot stove. That's us. If somebody is altruistic and the hero of a natural disaster in some other part of the world think those poor people over there, open up their checkbook and write a check, that's all great but where we go wrong is the first part of that, those poor people over there. It's not those poor people over there, that's happening to us. What's normally beyond our perception for most people is this underlying unity. It's more than just words. There is a truth to that that is normally beyond our awareness. A truth that it's not a platitude and cliché. There's a real fundamental truth there.
You emphasized that same fundamental truth by taking us back into orbit. You asked this question, "What is an orbit? It is when we no longer need our engines." We go back to that, almost it becomes a reaction rather than something we have to do. We don't even need our engines anymore. We are free-floating in the darkness. You also tell us, "Through our darkest moments is when we are given the opportunity to see the brightest light."
What you're referring to is another scene where I used a metaphor that a rocket is launching and it's launching a lone passenger. The passenger represents all life on Earth. Not only all life that presently lives but all the lives that will ever live. It was a literary tool that I use to try and paint some of the requirements for an effective course correction to the trajectory that our civilization is currently on, which if we extrapolate it out leads to disaster and to get on a better trajectory that leads to a positive restorative future that gets us to orbit. One of the things that we have to do to get to orbit is to jettison the weight of the first stage of the rocket. We're at the point where we need to let go of the first stage.
All the things that led to technological development and humans being the rulers of the world and being able to control a lot of the facilities and functions of Earth, that's what brought us to this point. If we try and hold on to the weight of what brought us to this point, we'll never make it to orbit and come crashing back down in a fiery violent crash. I don't want to give too much away of that scene but that to me is somewhat prescriptive in some of the things that will get us on the right track.
Perspective On Life: If we added up all the probabilities that you would be you, we come to the mathematical certainty that you are a miracle of incomprehensible proportions.
What you say also will help us unlock the doors that keep us contained. You used the word ego or false identities. It does open us up. That was the mission of this book and it's a beautiful one. If you don't mind, I want to use your words again that I feel sends us home. Let's leave it at that. Like you said, "What is home?" You redefined that. These are your words, "I am filled with the optimism of what our species can achieve when we come together and celebrate our shared humanity. Through us, we will come to know ourselves that there is but one universe and we are it." Ron, I cannot thank you enough for sharing your time, wisdom and insights. You're enriching all of us.
Like you always do, thank you for taking so much time, putting effort into dissecting, analyzing and bringing out all the important things. I appreciate the work that went into that, the patience and your dedication to telling me stories.
It's easy with a gentleman like yourself. Thank you, Ron.
It's my pleasure.
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About Ron Garan
Astronaut, Fighter Pilot, Test Pilot, Humanitarian
Having enjoyed an illustrious career that has cemented Colonel Ron Garan’s place as one of the world’s most influential individuals, the iconic father of three is a decorated NASA astronaut, fighter pilot and test pilot, a humanitarian, and a social entrepreneur.
As part of a select group of individuals who have been fortunate enough to see the world from space, Ron champions his “orbital perspective” message to improve life on earth. Ron is celebrated not just for his research in space but also for his humanitarian contribution to life on earth.
