Yesterday we arrived in Houston, and the first thing we did was go to NASA’s Mission Control Center. There’s a museum attached to it. I wasn’t expecting anything special from this attraction. However!!!!
I absolutely loved this place. Such amazing faces in the black-and-white photographs from the era when the first humans were launched into space—engineers, scientists, astronauts. Intelligent, profound, and inspired, with an incredible light in their eyes. People on a noble mission.
The place turned out to be filled with the nourishing energy of the union of dreams, reality, and a deep yearning of the heart to understand the nature of the cosmos. I didn’t want to leave. Looking down from the glass gallery at the hangar where cosmonauts train and where robots are developed and tested, I thought enviously that this was the kind of place where one would want to be and work—a place with a noble mission and the drive to push beyond the limits of what is currently possible.
And around the museum, roe deer roam the lawns—with their moist brown eyes, slender legs, and little tails. Nature is so close and so trusting of the heart’s potential.
It’s hard to describe my feelings—they’re powerful and profound—when humanity sincerely believes in its boundless potential and serves lofty goals. I hope the new century will also open up such horizons for us through awareness, courage, faith, and love.