Yeah, so ya' know I work at NASA. Space and shit. I will be honest it is pretty cool to work at NASA because we are thinking about the future and not today or tomorrow but 10 years from now or 50 years from now or 100 years from now,(not an oxford comma) and it is pretty cool.
People ask me sometimes if I want to goto Mars. We have a poster on my floor of elon musk that says "I want to die on Mars, just not on impact." it is faux inspirational.
I don't want to die on Mars.
I grew up wanting to be an Astronaut. It is such a self-less life goal. Not only because you are risking your life for knowledge but because you are dedicating your life to something. It is rigorous training.
It's not easy to die, I will be honest. I have read The Death of Ivan Ilych and it destroyed me. Dying is not fun or cool or nice. It is unknown and crazy and hard to deal with. But so is life. Life is harder to deal with than death sometimes.
It is easy to romanticize a trip to Mars while we live our lives doing very little on Earth. I would argue that it is harder to live a life dedicate to an ideal everyday on Earth than to fly to Mars and hope to create an ideal.
It's hard to stay late at work. It is hard to go home and put in extra hours working on projects, coding and developing new ideas. Very Hard. I don't want to die on Mars I want to die on Earth. I want to die exhausted and tired from working so hard to explore a cool future that I can only imagine in my mind. Hopefully, I can make some parts of it reality. Maybe not. It is hard work. It is hard to work 10 hours then come home, eat dinner and work 5 more. It is hard to dedicate life to a singular purpose that is greater than yourself.
Most people don't have the benefit of working at NASA, which makes it even harder. I was there one time also. Working the night shift at UPS loading packages on trucks so I could have money to goto school so I could imagine. Imagine a better life. A life where people don't suffer. A life where I am and other people are in awe of what goes on around them. That shit is not easy. It's not easy to have a vast array of knowledge or work on projects no one cares about or is paying you for. It is not easy to dedicate one's life to something that doesn't involve Social Media or clicking on ads or hopes of lots of money.
It's a simple question. If you had $Billions what would you buy? Would it be a house and a nice car? Something for your Mom? Great, I love my Ma (That's how we say it) also. But first, the first thing I would do is use that money to create something more than myself.
I am 33 and have been training to be a Scientist for over 10 years. A computer programmer for 15-20. And my contributions still pale in comparison to what is possible.
Ya' know what I want to do? I want to live. Maybe just for another day. But tomorrow I am going to try hard. And the next day. And the next. Maybe not as hard as I could have tried but I am going to try hard.
Don't live to die. Accept death because of how you lived.
(Inspired by a Dream I had)
