By Evan Falchuk
For my birthday, my mother gave me a reprint of the front page of the New York Times from November 19, 1969. In large print the banner headline screams: “2 ASTRONAUTS LAND ON THE MOON.”
Astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean landed early that morning, east coast time, and spent the rest of the day and a few hours of the next on the lunar surface. It was an exciting day.
But then it struck me.
If on this November 19, 40 years later, two astronauts were to land on the moon, the headline in the New York Times would be just as big, and scream just as loudly.
Of all the things you could tell someone in 1969 about the world of 2009, I bet there are few things thing they would find impossible to believe. One of them would be that the astronauts of Apollo 12 were some of the last people to walk on the moon.
How did this happen?
There are lots and lots of reasons. Vietnam, Watergate, the oil shocks and recession, the Cold War, the end of the Cold War, Iraq, OJ, 9/11, Iraq again, and on and on. There were so many things that seemed much more important than sending people to the moon. And before you know it, it’s been almost 40 years since anyone’s been there. In fact, it’s been 37 years since anyone has even left low earth orbit.
There’s a lesson I take from this, on my birthday.
It is the commonest of human traits to believe there will always be time.
There will always be time to take a chance and do something you’ve always dreamed of doing. There will always be time to tell someone you love them, repair a broken relationship, end a troubled one. There will always be time to read with your child, forgive someone for something they’ve done, make a new friend.
Just not today. No, today I am busy, and distracted with other important things. I’ll get to what’s really important, once I finish with this. It won’t take long.
But time moves on.
The photographs released recently of the Apollo 12 landing site should serve as a monument. A testament to the unfinished business of life, the unrealized dreams, and should compel us to reach for what we really long to achieve.
Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights…
