A couple weeks ago there was a breaking news story that caught my attention. NASA sent a spacecraft out with the mission of hitting an asteroid and knocking it out of orbit. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft orbited the sun for ten months searching for Dimorphos, a small space rock. On September 26th it found it and just over an hour later it hit it – 50 feet from its center – knocking it out of its orbit. It was a huge achievement. As I watched it unfold live, however, I started thinking about how Dimorphos had been going along, “living” its “life” circling Didymos – a larger asteroid – when all of a sudden, wham! It was hit and knocked off course with no warning.
I think you can see the analogy I’m about to make here, right? How often do we just go along, doing our thing, when we’re suddenly and unexpectedly hit with something that throws us for a loop? It could be a good thing, or it could be a negative hit, but either way our lives change.
My father-in-law once mentioned how he had written a paper about where he expected to be at a specified point in the future. If I remember correctly, everything – except perhaps the number of children – was absolutely spot-on accurate. I’ve been so jealous of that! I’m a planner, and I have a master calendar made for the entire new year by January 1st. I plan my church music a year in advance. I have tentative vacation dates far in advance. When it comes to the reality of my personal life, however, I can’t seem to plan more than a few hours ahead! Things always come up – good, bad, or indifferent. It can be frustrating.
When I was the editor of the college magazine my entire graphic design team went on strike (don’t ask). I thought I had put the magazine to bed on my end, but discovered that I had to learn typesetting (no computers for design work then) as quickly as possible. I spent many frustrating hours learning skills that were at best completely foreign to me. Let’s just say that I’m grateful for a print shop teacher who corrected the bulk of my wrong-sized headlines and crooked layouts. Anyway, through a circumstance outside of my control my weekend and few days completely changed.
That’s a small example, but there are huge ones as well. We used to live basically across the street from a major hospital and throughout the day and night I would hear sirens wailing as they brought people to the emergency room. Every time I heard those sirens I thought about how someone’s life had changed – quite possibly permanently.
We all have stories of events that came along and knocked us out of orbit, so to speak. The question becomes, what do we do at such times?
Rudyard Kipling wrote a beautiful poem that has become so commonplace in graduation cards that I’m not sure anyone actually reads it and absorbs the message.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
I absolutely love this poem! If no matter what happens we manage to keep our wits about us, remain true to ourselves, and not freak out then we’re doing okay! We’ve all heard the stories about lottery winners who are completely broke within a year or two, or people who suffer a great loss who then are unable to function and move forward. We’ve also head stories of those who’ve suffer but pick up their lives from the ashes and do incredible things.
Not every event that knocks us out of our predictable orbit is fully unexpected, even though it seems it. Someone I loved used to say, “out of the blue like a scheduled airline.” The truth is, though, that things we should have seen coming are subject to such great denial that we don’t see them until they smack right into us. The old, “how can I be out of money when I still have checks” phenomenon.
There are so many events – big and small – that can throw us out of orbit that it really behooves us to figure out in advance how we will handle those situations. Figuring out who we are, being aware of what’s happening around us, learning not to panic, and working to operate in a calm and rational and thinking way at all times is obviously the optimum. I once had a professor tell me that I was remarkably calm when under pressure. After laughing for quite some time I thanked her and strove to become the person she perceived me to be.
Obviously that hasn’t work out as frequently as I’d hoped. For example, there was my experience with a VW Bug many years ago. I saw this cute VW rolling down the street with no one inside. Being me I panicked, raced over to the car, planted myself right behind it, and used all my great strength and might to try to stop it from continuing to go down this hill. Obviously I failed (and ended up with a sore back for my efforts). The car rolled a little further and landed in some bushes. Panicking and not thinking did nothing but hurt me. I’m not a superhero, but pretending for a moment that I was was patently ridiculous. How silly!
Being knocked off kilter and out of orbit shouldn’t keep us from progressing. NASA scientists are now studying exactly what the impact is of DART’s hit on Dimorphos. Is the orbit faster? Slower? Different shaped? I originally thought that Dimorphos had been destroyed, but no – she’d just been thrown for a loop. Unforeseen change can give unforeseen opportunities that can lead to unforeseen growth. That is actually what I’m hoping for whenever I find myself hit by another scheduled or unscheduled spacecraft.
Look to God and Live... Joyfully! 