From The Earth To The Moon To The Oval Office
How A Sense Of Wonder & A Sense Of History Can Expand The Horizons Of Our Children
Back in 1775, around the corner from my childhood home, George Washington stopped for a visit in what is now the Squire Stanley House on the Choate Rosemary Hall campus.
Earlier that century, a few blocks down my street, Lyman Hall was born. He went on to sign the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
In the 1930’s, just a few houses from my own, John F. Kennedy spent his second year at Choate in the East Cottage. My grandfather, Charles Kennedy, was a custodian at the Winter Exercise Building at Choate around the same time.
And in the 1960’s, right in the middle of the same block, sat an observatory where Choate students gathered on clear nights to peer into the heavens through a large refractor telescope.
On many an evening I walked by that silver-domed structure, hoping the Choaties (as we young townies called them) would invite me in. When they did, I’d catch a glimpse of a cluster of stars, a gaseous planet or the craters of the moon, and was enthralled. Looking up was, in fact, a way of looking back in history, too, as the starscape is really a time machine.
Following my granddad’s steps a bit, in college summers I was on the maintenance crew at Choate, and when we worked in the dorms of Squire Stanley and East Cottage, my mind was drawn back to the time when Washington took tea and Kennedy slept and studied in those very same rooms whose walls I was painting yellow or green. What colors were they when those men who would be presidents inhabited that space?
My proximity to such historic and astronomical sites fueled in me both a sense of history and a sense of wonder. My parents encouraged those interests, taking me to see President Kennedy pass by on his way to speak at Yale in 1962, and to places like West Point, Williamsburg, Gettysburg and Washington, DC.
They bought me my own (much smaller) refractor telescope in 6th grade, and I spent many an hour in the backyard peering at the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, no longer dependent on the good will of Choaties letting me take a peek.
Other factors influenced my appetite for history and space: the political and social tumult of the 60’s, the race to the moon. Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Walter Cronkite, @therealstanlee. The Fantastic Four, The Twentieth Century, The Twilight Zone all made their mark on my impressionable mind. So, too, did my mother’s tales about the Great Depression and hearing the news of Pearl Harbor, and my father’s bedside stories about fighting the Nazis and the liberation of Dachau in World War II.
Two years after the lunar landing, I started college intending to major in astrophysics. But soon my love of astronomy ran headlong into the limitations of my brain, and I realized that the world had little need for a middling scientist. Politics being much more amenable to mediocrity, I switched to history and political science and went on to a career in public service, though I never lost my passion for the sky.
The worlds of my childhood neighborhood — the history and the stars — came together in a special way on July 20, 1999. I was working for President Bill Clinton then, and Neil Armstrong, @TheRealBuzz and Michael Collins came by the Oval Office to mark the 30th anniversary of the lunar landing. I was lucky to be there as the astronauts presented the President with an ancient lunar rock.
@billclinton would later point to that glass-encased rock in difficult negotiations and say,
“You see this rock? It’s been here for 3.6 billion years, so let’s all calm down, We’re just passing through here and it’s going to be fine.”
Growing up with some measure of historical perspective and appreciation for the vastness of the universe — however rudimentary and childlike it might have been — gave me a feel for my place in time and space and expanded my view of what was possible.
I fear children today don’t learn enough about history and the sciences, and as a consequence they don’t gain an appreciation for just how far and wide their ambition can take them. Technology does give young people immediate access to vast stores of data. Used properly, it can spark creativity and be a source of knowledge. Yet technology can also erect barriers, supplanting insight and inspiration with texting, games and other forms of instant gratification that do much to distract children’s attention and little to enrich their lives.
As the comedian Louis C.K. said on Conan O’Brien’s show some time ago, “you need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something,” explaining why he doesn’t let his kids have cell phones. You need “the ability to just sit there…being a person.”
Much of the modern world discourages quiet contemplation, quick to bring us breaking news, slow to give us nuance, perspective, the long view of things. Politicians eschew “giant leap” endeavors like sending humans to Mars in favor of small bore projects that promise more immediate (as in before the next election) results. “We’ve got enough problems here on Earth,” goes the myopic mantra, which fails to recognize that not a single taxpayer dollar can be found in the lunar or Martian dust or in orbit around the Earth.
We seem to lack the patience, courage and vision of ancestors who created great cathedrals for the ages and embarked on dangerous journeys and risky enterprises knowing they might not live to see them completed.
It seems mystifying at first, to consider what motivated such selfless efforts. Especially in this age of sequesters, shutdowns and short-term thinking. People who get annoyed when a movie stalls and buffers on their tablet might not be too interested in working on a job that won’t be done for a hundred years or more.
As a song in @HamiltonMusical goes, our legacy is about “planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.” @Lin_Manuel echoes the Greek proverb, “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
But if we understand our place in history and appreciate the wonders of the world around us, we can be more inspired to labor, and even die, for causes that outlive ourselves and benefit only others. That is part of human nature, and it allows us to tap into something quite divine.
First responders have that sense and sensibility each time they report for work. Scientists, too, who spend their careers slowly advancing the frontiers of knowledge so that their successors can begin where they end, and thus move humanity a little closer to the ultimate truth of things.
I was very lucky to grow up where I did, on that block so rich in history, with telescopes large and small, and parents who introduced me to the world before and the sky above.
But the truth is, even in this era of modern complexity and technological prowess, the evidence and fruits of the past are not so far away no matter where a child might live. The stars — the wonders of all of nature — can be observed anytime, anywhere. A little less Minecraft, a little more data mining about history and science. And yes, there are apps for that.
Parenthood itself is something that allows us to weave a small patch in the eternally growing quilt of civilization. Any mother or father is capable of encouraging a child to unplug and calm down, just sit there, being a person. It is not easy, to be sure. With two kids myself, I understand the competition we face from the digital temptations of this age. When I saw my 12-year-old looking at an actual newspaper the other day, I took a quick photo, the sight was so rare.
We are “just passing through here” on our own 4.5 billion year old rock, but that’s all the more reason to give our children a sense of history and a sense of wonder along the way.
If we do, they’ll dream bolder dreams and take more fantastical leaps of faith. And then we’ll have reason to hope that it is, indeed, going to be fine.
