Saturday, August 25, 2012

8/27 LIFE... or something similar...

This past Friday, my youngest daughter and I visited our local library. The library was hosting a discussion with a former NASA Astrophysicist. As both she and I are junkies when it comes to anything space related, this was a can't miss activity.

We were welcomed by the Head of the Library and offered "astronaut ice cream." Freeze dried chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry- just like those heroes ate! It had the density of Styrofoam, but if I'm honest, it wasn't all that bad. The chocolate sort of left an after taste similar to the skin that forms on top of warm pudding. It also stuck to our teeth, like that skin does.

It wasn't a huge crowd that gathered to hear the talk, but I was very pleased with the rather (for a small community) large number of children in attendance. As he spoke and displayed a variety of photographs taken with the Hubble Deep Space telescope, the oohs and ahhs from the kids was noted.

The pictures themselves were stunning. The different colors that could be seen so far off in space, of various star clusters, galaxies, and the like, were beautiful., but I was more taken in with the reactions of the kids.

In this day and age, when kids can get immediate pleasure via their XBOX or laptops, when they hardly form complete sentences while texting their peers, witnessing this group of kids getting more pleasure from learning science was fascinating.

The talk taught the kids, and reminded us adults in the audience, of just how small we really are in the universe. We are nothing more that atoms, smaller even, if taken in relation to the universe as a whole. The kids hadn't known that to be the case... at least, to see it visually solidified the fact.

Following the talk and Q&A session, we were invited to head outside, where the speaker had set up a large telescope. The craters on the moon were crystal clear. Sadly, Saturn was too low in the sky for viewing, but that didn't deter the kids from their excitement. I listened to them, many of them talking about how cool the moon's craters appeared... how they hoped one day to step foot on the small rock that orbits our planet.

My daughter has had a goal for a few years now. She wishes to be the first female to set foot on the Moon, then work her way to stepping on Mars. She's only 11 years old currently, with a long road ahead. She may change her mind one day... but I hope not.

When I was a child, my heroes were always the folks who dared to dream big, then set out to achieve that dream. Sally Ride- I remember her mission. I watched it on the huge console TV in my family's living room. I remember gasping at the realization that she was the first to achieve something great that hadn't been done prior.

Too many kids today have their eyes set on a different sort of prize. Wealth, fame, their own reality TV show. It makes me sad to think that they aren't getting the big picture: While we all want something to see at the movies, we all want a great summer song on the radio, it isn't so much about the end result as it is the trip to get there. In an age where you can be discovered on youtube and have instant celebrity status, it makes me wonder who the heroes really are. Worse yet, as parents, why aren't we pointing those heroes out?

It leaves me breathless each time my daughter tells me about her plans to get great grades, go to a great college, then work her way up the ranks to finally take a seat on that mission which will firmly plant her feet on another world. Not once has she mentioned how famous she'll be, how much money she could make, or even that her place in history will be cemented.

How fantastic is it, to have a dream only for the sake of dreaming?

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